


Prequel

by Draikinator



Category: Undertale
Genre: A lot of religion, Child Abuse, Child Death, Depression, Gen, Homophobia, Illness, Poisoning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prequel, Religious Abuse, Second Person, Self-Harm, Slurs, Suicide, Transmisogyny, Transphobia, Violence, emetophobia warning, nonbinary chara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13963971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/pseuds/Draikinator
Summary: It never mattered if you were good or if you were bad. You were fucked either way.





	Prequel

**Author's Note:**

> Back in October, with Nanowrimo looming, I wanted to work on something. I'd had this idea for a long time- writing the prequel to Undertale using some of the information you find in the game, but just.... completely unbroken. I write everything in vignettes and snippets, and as an experiment I just wanted to write something long, without a break. I ended up not finishing it for Nanowrimo (hey, five months the charm, right?) and I didn't end up needing 50k to do it, but I'm still proud of what I made. I hope you like it, but if you're unfamiliar with my work, I emphasize that you SHOULD heed the warning tags, as this is pretty graphic.

You pick at the scabs on the insides of your wrists absently, peeling back the dried blood like bacon bits from your flesh. It hurts, and you can see the sticky red-pink flesh underneath that’s not quite healed yet, but it doesn’t start bleeding again.

You sit up in the pew and lean on the back of the one in front of you, casting your eyes upward to look at the the moonlight filtering in through the stained glass window of Jesus Christ above the pulpit. He’s on the crucifix, which means you know he’s dying. You never liked this window. There were two other people there in the bible, a murderer and a thief, but they aren’t on the window, just Jesus. He’s supposed to listen to people’s prayers, and Mrs. Gracie says that Jesus talks to her all the time and tells her who's been sinning, but he’s never talked to you. You think maybe he knows you’re a bad kid and that’s why he doesn’t talk to you. Mrs. Gracie always says you’re a bad kid.

You like the way the dust floats in the light, like there’s no gravity tying it down. You sometimes wish you could float away like dust and rise up to the ceiling and maybe even just go through it, float into the sky and become a cloud. That’s not real, though, and Mrs. Gracie says that you aren’t allowed to tell stories anymore. You lie back down on the pew. You’re tired, and Mrs. Gracie told you you had to sleep in the church tonight even though it’s cold because you talked back to Pastor Bill at dinner and you needed to ask Jesus to forgive you.

You don’t know if he has. He hasn’t said anything to you. He just hangs silently in the stained glass window by himself and looks through you. You hope he isn’t mad. You’re not a good kid, but you try to be. You just mess up.

The fabric of the seat is a sort of pea-green and kind of pukey, but you won’t say that out loud again because it’s rude and last time you did you got popped, but its covered in little balls string or something, the way all old fabric does, like most of your clothes, and you like to pick at it, pulling at the little bits and flicking them onto the carpet quietly. You wonder if that’s naughty. The carpet isn’t super clean, so probably not.

Mrs. Gracie will be mad if you don’t get any sleep, but it’s so cold it’s keeping you awake. You wish she’d let you take a blanket or something, at least, but she said only good kids get blankets. Sometimes people leave their coats and stuff in the pews by mistake, but you didn’t get lucky this time, so you just have your pajamas.

Eventually you just settle for rereading the Bible sitting in the back of the pew in front of you. Revelations is your favourite chapter. You know you’re being punished for something you deserve, so you bite your arms until your teeth leave deep purple crescent moons in your skin. The Bible tells you about great beasts with seven heads rising from the sea and spitting lies.

When the sun starts to peek through the stained glass windows, Mrs. Gracie opens the double doors at the back and calls your name.

“Charlie!” She calls, her voice old and cracked like rotten wood, “You can come out now! I hope this has taught you a lesson.”

You scamper out of the pew and run up in front of her, holding your hands behind your back politely and your head dipped down, “Uh huh, can I go do my chores, now?”

“Go get changed, first, before you get your jammies dirty,” she says, ushering you around her and through the doors. You hurry around the church and to the house behind it, through the foyer, the living room and into the laundry room. You pull down the ladder to the attic and scurry upstairs to dig around the wooden chest at the foot of your bed for a change of clothes. You pick out a soft green long-sleeved shirt and some denim overalls, the nice ones with the buttons shaped like flowers. You fold the ladder back up when you go downstairs, and put your pajamas in the washing machine.

First up is the chickens. You’re not a fan of the chickens- they’re mean and they don’t like you, even though you feed them. You put your shoes on at the door and go around back of the house to where the chicken coop is and grab a feed bag from the shed. It’s a new one so it’s heavy and hard to carry, and you used to just take food by cupfulls, but Mrs. Gracie said that hard work was the Lord’s work and it was supposed to be hard, so you carry the bag now.

You unlatch the gate and hope maybe the chickens are still asleep, but the second the latch snaps open they start clucking and peeping and hopping out of the coop and around you. Your least favourite is the big white and brown rooster, Kenny, who pecks at your ankles until you dump out some food around the ground when he starts pecking that instead. You’re glad you wore denim today, because sometimes when he pecks your legs they bleed.

You drag the feedbag back out to the shed and put it away, grabbing the egg bucket and heading into the coop while the chickens are busy eating. You find fifteen new eggs, but this is the fifth day in a row you haven’t found any eggs under Harriet and you know if you get to seven, Mrs. Gracie will have her for dinner. You don’t like the chickens but you don’t like that you eat them when they stop being useful, even though they worked hard and made lots of eggs in the past. It doesn’t seem fair.

You find a hidden pile of eggs under the nest block on the wall and finish off the bucket. You lock the coop up behind you and take the eggs into the kitchen and put them in the basket on the counter for Mrs. Gracie. If you do good on your chores today Mrs. Gracie might make you scrambled eggs for lunch.

You go back outside and start weeding the garden. You like the garden more than you like the chickens. It never pecks at you or makes loud noises, it’s nice and quiet and simple. All you need to do is pull up the weeds so all the plants can grow safely. Carrots, turnips, green beans, cucumbers- pumpkins, too, but they haven’t grown any fruits yet.

You’re supposed to pull the little golden lionheaded flowers from the garden. They’re weeds, Mrs. Gracie tells you, but they’re your favourite. Soft and yellow, your favourite colour, and they grow so fast. It’s your job to kill them, though.

You sit in the pile of plucked golden flower weeds and look out at the fence of mountains keeping the sky at bay. They form a half circle in the distance, wide V shapes that catch the sun as it falls at night. You’ve heard stories about those mountains- the mountains no one ever returns from. Mrs. Gracie says those mountains are places where the Devil lives and anyone who goes there becomes one of his demons in Hell, but the people in Church sometimes say those mountains are older than the Devil, and older than God and Jesus, too. They say they’re the real kind of cursed, the kind that faith doesn’t fix. You don’t know about that. All you know is that people go up, and they don’t ever come down.

You have a fantasy where you stand up while you’re gardening, and then you run into the woods and into the mountains to find out what’s really there. You don’t look back and no one looks for you. You’re homeschooled and you don’t always make it to church, so no one but Mrs. Gracie and Pastor Bill would even notice you were gone. You could just stand up and go and no one could stop you. You stand up and look at the mountains, the wind tugging at your hair and your heart. It begs you to go. You don’t.

You get dirt all over the knees of your coveralls. You aren’t done until the sun is nearly overhead, because you need to water the vegetables and toss on some fertilizer, too, but not too much. It’s all very precise, but Mrs. Gracie hasn’t yelled at you for getting it wrong in a while so you think you’re getting better at it.

You go back inside.

“Charlie, you’re filthy. You wash up and toss them clothes in the washer and I’ll make you some eggs for lunch.”

You bounce excitedly on your heels. You love eggs, and this means you did a good job today. You still have inside chores left, but you can eat lunch first. You run into the laundry room and throw your clothes in the washer, then cut across the hall into the bathroom to take a quick shower. You turn the water up hot, really hot, until it hurts your skin where it touches. You’ve read the Bible so you know that suffering makes you holy. Bad kids like you need to suffer a lot to make up for what your Mama did and what you’re like, so you need to suffer a lot if you want to get into heaven. Your skin is red and tender when you get out and towel off, and you go back upstairs to put on some inside clothes. You get a short sleeved yellow shirt on and start looking for some bottoms.

Your hand brushes over the fabric skirt you took from the donation bin last week. You know stealing is wrong, but, it’s black and velvety with little embroidered golden flowers on little loop de loops of thread, and it’s so beautiful. You run your hands over the fabric and rub your thumbs in little circles over the raised thread of the flowers, feeling the rough gold texture against your skin. You wonder what it would feel like to wear, but- Mrs. Gracie would be mad. You know you’re not supposed to wear girl’s clothes. She’ll get mad if she finds out you took the skirt and she’ll make you go back to time out in the basement. You hate the basement.

You move the skirt back to the bottom of your trunk and hide it under some other clothes. You take a nice pair of black pants instead and head downstairs. Mrs. Gracie is cooking eggs on the stove.

“Can I have pepper in mine?” you ask, peeking over the edge of the stove.

Mrs. Gracie pops you with the the spatula on your hands. It’s the metal one, sharp, still hot from the pan and it cuts the back of your hand where it strikes and you yank your hands back to your chest and shrink away, apologies tumbling from your lips.

“You know to say please,” Mrs. Gracie says, sharply, but she shakes some pepper in anyway, so you know she’s not too angry with you, at least. You hold your palm over the back of your other hand and try to keep the blood inside. It isn’t too much, but it’s more than none, and it feels wet against your skin. You grab a paper towel and wrap your hand in it, before you open the dishwasher and take out some clean plates to set the table.

“An orange juice for me, and a milk for Pastor Bill,” Mrs. Gracie says, and you open the fridge to get everything out and pour it.

“Can I have some orange juice, too, please?” You ask, hopefully.

“When you buy it yourself,” she snaps, “You can have water from the tap.”

“Okay, Mrs. Gracie,” you say. and fill your glass with tap water. You hear the door creak and you rush to your seat and fold your hands in your lap. Pastor Bill opens the door and you keep your eyes on your hands, twisting the paper towel around the cut. It’s a little red.

“Good morning, Charlie,” grunts Pastor Bill. He kisses Mrs. Gracie on the cheek and sits down, “Did you finish your outside chores?”

“Yessir,” you say, “I fed the chickens and took care of the garden. I’ll do the laundry and the dishes after lunch.”

“Good. Make sure you sweep out the church, too. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Yessir,” you say, “I’ll make sure it’s real clean.”

“And here’s the eggs!” says Mrs. Gracie, scooping some onto Pastor Bill’s plate. She puts some on hers and then yours last.

“These look great, Gracie,” says Pastor Bill. “Delicious as usual.”

“Well, aren’t you just sweet as puddin?” Mrs. Gracie laughs, putting the pan in the sink. You’ll have to clean that later, “Give me your hand, Charlie, let’s pray.”

You give her your hand and belatedly realize it's the one with the paper towel. She starts to hold your hand and then lets go and smacks it, “Boy! Go put a band-aid on, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, Mrs. Gracie,” you say, slinking out of your chair and hurrying to the bathroom. You wash the blood off your hand and find a case of band-aids in the cabinet. You need to use one of the big ones to cover it. You put it on carefully and then go back out into the kitchen.

Mrs. Gracie and Pastor Bill are waiting for you and they look annoyed. You slide back into your chair and take their hands and apologize a few times, very quietly. Mrs. Gracie doesn’t say anything, but Pastor Bill bows his head and you do the same.

“Thank the good Lord for providing the food on this table today, and for granting us another day on this Earth in which to enjoy it. We pray that you watch over us this day, as you do all days. Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven Give us this day our day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil. Amen.”

You pick up your head and pull your hands back, grabbing a fork and stabbing it into the eggs. They’re good, warm and salty. You reach across the table to grab your glass of water and your hand slips on the glass- it tumbles from between your fingers and spills all over the table. Mrs. Gracie yells and jumps back from the table, but Pastor Bill doesn’t move until the water spills into his lap, then his hands ball into fists against the table and he slings the fork across the room. It smashes into the wall and knocks over the saltshaker on the counter.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” You scream, covering your head with your arms. You apologize as fast and loud as you can, but Pastor Bill grabs you by your scabby wrist and yanks you hard out of your chair. You stumble and don’t quite find your footing and he’s holding you up but you keep your eyes squeezed shut and keep shrieking apologies.

“Don’t I tell you to be more careful?!” Mrs. Gracie snaps, and Pastor Bill pulls you up so that your feet are dangling.

“Boy, you better know better than to pull that shit by now. Do you like making messes?!”

“No!”

“Do you like causing trouble?!”

“No!”

“Don’t you lie to me! You know that liars go to Hell!”

“I’m not lyin’, Pastor Bill, I’m not!”

“You wanna end up in Hell like your Mama?! Is that what you want?!” He yells. His face is an inch away from yours. You can feel his hot breath on your cheeks, and it smells like fresh scrambled eggs and brimstone.

“No, no, no!” you sob, “I don’t wanna go to Hell, it was an accident, I’m sorry!!”

“I think you need think about your behaviour in time out,” he says. His words are oozing out of his mouth like silver tongued snakes.

“No, no, please, Pastor Bill, not the basement, I’ll be good, I promise, I promise-” He ignores you and starts walking toward the basement door in the hall. You let your legs ragdoll and he drags you like a bag of potatoes, so you start kicking at the floor and pulling at your wrists, desperate, “Mrs. Gracie, no, please, I was good, I was good, I don’t wanna go to the basement, please don’t let him make me go-”

“Charlie, stop yelling! I told you not to yell!” Is all she says, but she looks upset. Pastor Bill opens the basement door and you scream as loud as you can and you don’t shut up until he drags you down to the bottom of the rotten wood stairs and slaps you across the face, hard. You’re too stunned to make any more noises until he has both your wrists tied together by the itchy yellow rope you hate, and he’s knotting it to the wooden support beam on the floor under the stairs.

You pull at your arms again, trying to stop him from being able to finish the knot. You scream, but he shoves your face into the concrete floor and you can’t get your mouth open. You’re crying but he finishes the knot and stomps back up the stairs. He stops at the door.

“Quit crying. You’re a big boy, Charlie, and you know big boys don’t cry.” The hall light silhouettes him like a dark shape with a golden halo, the messenger of God come to banish you to the dark to atone for your sins. You scream when he shuts and locks the door, bathing you in unending darkness, and you put your feet against the bar and pull against the rope, but all it does is cut new rifts into your skin and make your shoulders hurt.

You scream until your throat hurts.

Eventually you run out of screams in your chest and your arms are tired and your eyes are puffy and you ache all over from pulling, so you go limp on the ground and lie in the dark. You’re so tired. You didn’t sleep last night, you worked this morning, and you’ve barely eaten. You’re hungry and thirsty and exhausted, and the real darkness of the basement gives way to the less real darkness of sleep.

When you wake, it’s because the door at the top of the stairs opens. You tilt your head to look up, pathetically. It’s Mrs. Gracie. You listen to the click-clack of her low black heels on the stairs until she’s behind you.

“You’ve missed service,” she chides, “I had to clean the chapel myself.”

“I’m sorry,” you say into the floor.

“I know you are,” she says, “You know better than to make Pastor Bill mad.”

“I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything, but she bends down and unties the rope from your wrists. You struggle limply to your feet and she pulls you up by your armpits.

“Come along, let’s go get you cleaned up, then.” You follow Mrs. Gracie up the stairs and into the bathroom. She scrubs you clean in the bathtub and pulls the tube of neosporin out of the medicine cabinet. You give her your wrists.

“You know why he’s so hard on you, right?”

“Because my mama was a no-good crack whore prostitute, and the devil lives in my blood,” you say, like clockwork. She nods, and you wince when the gel hits your cuts.

“He just doesn’t want you ending up like your Mama. She ignored the teachings of the Lord, overindulged in pleasures of the flesh, sold her body, and do you know what happened to her?”

“She got killed.”

“She got killed,” Mrs. Gracie repeats. She puts the Neosporin back in the cabinet and retrieves the box of big bandaids, “And Pastor Bill doesn’t want you gettin’ killed and goin’ to Hell, too. He’s looking out for you.”

“Maybe if I went to Hell, I could meet my Mama,” you say, but you look at the floor. Mrs. Gracie slaps you, but you don’t bother to cry out.

“Boy, you know what Hell is like? Your flesh burns off your bones every day. The Devil rapes you and no matter how hard you cry, nobody comes and helps you, not ever. You wanna go to Heaven, right?”

“Yes, Mrs. Gracie, I wanna go to Heaven,” you mumble. Your cheek stings. She puts some bandaids on your wrists.

“Now go upstairs and get dressed. You still have to do your chores today.”

You drop down from the counter onto the floor, rubbing your cheek as you head into the laundry room and up the stairs into your room. You get another pair of coveralls and a blue shirt with Thomas the Tank Engine on it. You’ve read some of the picture books of Thomas, but you’ve never seen the cartoon. Mrs. Gracie says that the TV inspires sinners, and it would be an especially bad influence on a bad kid like you.

You feed the chickens. You weed the garden. You do the laundry. You wash the dishes. You vacuum the house. Your face turns red-purple where Pastor Bill mashed it into the floor and you ignore it. Your stomach is screaming by the time Mrs. Gracie starts cooking dinner.

“Set the table, Charlie,” she says from the stove, “and wash your hands first!”

You wash your hands in the bathroom, careful not to pull off the bandaid on the back of your hand. You set the table and fill your glass with water from the tap.

“Milk for me and Pastor Bill, Charlie,” Mrs. Gracie says. You think she’s making spaghetti. You hate spaghetti. You pour the milk.

Dinner is uneventful. You try not to wrinkle your nose at spaghetti sauce because you don’t want to go back in time out for being rude, but you don’t like the taste of tomato sauce and you don’t like the colour. It’s full of meat and bright red and it makes your skin crawl along your bones, but you say nothing and clean your plate. You don’t do anything bad, and Pastor Bill doesn’t get mad at you.

You clean off the table, putting all the dishes and pots in the dishwasher to run overnight. You pick up the knife Mrs. Gracie cut the tomatoes with and it's wet and red and you stop. You need to put it in with the dishes, but the red on the blade makes you tilt it against the light. You didn’t get punished tonight but you don’t want to forget that you’re bad, bad, bad, and you deserve to suffer. You look at the doorway to Pastor Bill and Mrs. Gracie’s room, but it’s dark.

You pull up your sleeve and lay the flat of the blade against your arm. It’s covered in purple half moons from your teeth and the bandages on your wrists and old white scars from where you’ve cut yourself before. The blade is cold and wet on your skin and it makes you shiver. You’re not supposed to like it. It’s supposed to hurt. You’re supposed to suffer.

You put it in the dishwasher when you’re done. You clean up the stove. You push the chairs in. You sweep the floor. You go to your room.

You open your clothes trunk to get your pajamas and your hands stray over the skirt again. You look behind you, at the ladder folded up over the trapdoor out of your room, as if Mrs. Gracie or Pastor Bill might rip it open at any second and drag you screaming back to the basement again, but the room is quiet, and the door doesn’t move. They don’t hardly ever come up here, anyway. You push away some of the other clothes and pick up the skirt in trembling hands, turning back to check the door again. You run your hands over the skirt, and then take a deep breath, and rip your pants off and put it on.

It feels good. You do a little spin, arms pressed to your chest, and the skirt picks up with the motion and floats around your knees. You smile and spin a little faster, hands at your sides this time like the girls you see in magazines. It feels good.

You open up your chest again and search for something to match the skirt. You poke around, and then find your nice white button up collared shirt that you’re supposed to wear to Sunday service. It makes you feel fancy, and you dig around again for some long black dress socks. You spin on the floor, your hair and the skirt flitting up and around you and you can’t stop yourself from letting out a quiet huff of laughter. Mrs. Gracie and Pastor Bill would kill you if they saw you dressed like this. You know boys aren’t supposed to wear girl’s clothes. Pastor Bill says that it’s a sin. You wonder if Jesus is watching and if he’s mad. You wonder if it would feel so fun if it was really bad.

You don’t have a lot of things in your room, but you have a nightstand with a lamp and some stuff you hide from Mrs. Gracie. You open up the drawer and see if there’s anything you can play with and maybe look like the girls in magazines that look happy- some little toys kids leave in sunday school sometimes, a golden cross necklace you found in the vestibule once- you put that one on. You find a hairband you sometimes use when your hair gets long and it gets in your eyes and you pull your shoulder length hair back into a ponytail. You wish you had a mirror, but it’s dark outside and you can sort of see yourself in the reflection on the window glass and you actually kind of look like a girl- you tilt your face so you can’t see the red purple side very well and you look nice, like the girls in magazines.

You spin again, and then you close your eyes and pretend you’re a famous dancer on a theatre stage, or a famous diva opera singer in a musical or maybe you’ve just lost your job and you’re dancing in the rain- you heard a woman in church talk about that once and it sounded cool and romantic and-

You don’t hear the door open.

“Boy, what are you stompin’ around for up he- Charlie!”

“Pastor Bill, I-” you start. You’re going to explain it was an accident, that you’re sorry, but you don’t get the chance. He grabs you by your hair and yanks you down the stairs. You stumble and trip and fall and your leg gets caught in the ladder and twists weird when he yanks you downward and it comes out again, and everything inside you is going fast- “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-” you cry, but he isn’t listening to you.

He drags you past the open door to him and Mrs. Gracie’s bedroom and you see her in bed with a book and her reading glasses and she looks startled. You grab at Pastor Bill’s arm, trying to relieve the white fire in your scalp where he’s pulling your hair.

“Gracie, come look what this boy was doin’!” he hollers, and you hear Mrs. Gracie slide out of bed and come to the door. She gasps when she sees you and covers her mouth with both of her hands.

“I’m sorry!” you say again, trying to wrench free, panicked. He isn’t listening, though, he isn’t listening, and Pastor Bill yanks you again, into the kitchen and toward the hallway with the door to the basement. Your breath catches in your throat. You don’t wanna go. You don’t wanna go back to the basement. You can’t go back in the dark.

“You never learn your fuckin’ lesson!” Pastor Bill hollers, and you kick against the floor, shrieking, “My wife and I open up our home to you when your whore mother dies and you do nothin’ but cause us trouble!”

“No! I don’t wanna go!” your leg hits a chair and knocks it over and Pastor Bill struggles to grab you from around the shoulders instead. He wrestles with your flailing little arms and you hit him hard in the face and he lets go. You hit the floor and scramble away across the tile.

“Get back over here, boy!” He yells, and stomps toward you like some foul oozing beast, a beast rising from the sea with seven heads and ten crowned horns that blaspheme God, with a bear’s massive taloned paws and a lion’s dripping fanged maw, stalking toward you with the intent of ruination and darkness-

You grab a knife from the counter.

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone, I don’t want to go back in the basement!” You scream. Revelations continue and the beast does not halt in its approach. The kitchen is spinning around you, circles of white-yellow light that do cartwheels around your heart and table chairs that topple over themselves. You keep screaming that you won’t go back, and the white-yellow lights go red.

“Boy, you put that knife down this instant, you’re just making me gotta whoop you harder now-” You jab the knife into his potbelly.

You expect it to be harder. To take more effort, but it just… goes in. It just goes right in, and then you aren’t holding the knife anymore. Pastor Bill is screaming. Mrs. Gracie is screaming. You’re screaming.

You run.

Out the kitchen door, through the garden, past the chickens, into the trees and toward the mountain cradle skyline, towards the mountains where demons like you call home. The stars twinkle coldly above and you think that God is not watching tonight.

You don’t have much of a plan but you want to run without stopping until you reach the top of the tallest mountain that impales the sun every night. The world spins like a top and at some point you must black out because when you come back into yourself you’re waking up in the roots of a gnarled old tree. The sky is blue-pink with dawn and you’re moist with morning dew. You sit up, bleary, and look around.

It looks like you’re in the forest, surrounded by old oak and pine trees. The shadows cast by the leaves on the branches have stopped grass from growing in places and left large blotches of flat earth. Your body hurts- it’s sore all over and your face feels puffy. Your head hurts especially and you reach up to feel the back of your scalp- your hair sort of feels thinner, but you can’t be sure. You look down at your hands.

There’s dried blood on them, red-maroon and crusty, cracked along your knuckles and dug into the divets of your nails, bit down to the bed. You cry out and shove your hands into your armpits, closing your eyes. You bite your tongue and shiver and try and fail not to cry. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know why you hurt him.

You’re glad you did.

Mrs. Gracie was right. The devil lives in your blood. A good person would never be happy they stabbed someone, let alone a man of God. The birds chirp and your teeth chatter, and eventually, you stand up.

You’re not sure where you are. You’re very sure you can’t go home, so you look up and find the sun, peeking through the labyrinthian net of oak branches hiding the sky. The sun sets over the mountains, and it’s rising, now, so that must means that’s the way you came. You can’t go back there. You don’t know anything else, but you know you can’t go home.

You stand up and fall back down when you try to put pressure on your left foot, and then you remember when it got caught in the ladder and twisted. You hope it isn’t broken, but if it is, you probably deserve it. You stand up again, but slower this time, favouring your screaming ankle. You take a careful, probative step, and you can hobble okay as long as you’re careful not to put too much weight on it, so you start out in the opposite direction of the sun, towards the mountains no one ever comes back from.

It’s a few hours before you pass another house.

It doesn’t look like anyone’s home- you can peek through the trees into the backyard and see a big plastic tonka tricycle and a sandbox, and a one floor trailer house with a wooden deck. There’s a metal pen out back with two dogs in it, a black labrador and something white and fluffy. They’re sleeping. You don’t see any cars in the driveway, but you do see a clothesline stretched across the yard, behind the dogpen. There’s clothes almost your size, so they must have a kid your age.

You look down at your own clothes with a start and realize you’re still wearing the skirt. Your belly flips in revulsion and horror- boys don’t wear skirts, boys don’t wear girls clothes, this all happened because you acted like a deviant, like your mother who went to Hell and before you can even think about it you run and grab a pair of shorts and a shirt off the clothesline, and when the dogs start barking, you run, again, straight for the mountains, huffing and puffing and clutching the new clothes to your chest.

Eventually you come to a stop, leaning on your knees to sputter and gasp for air. You rip the skirt off and throw it as far as you can, and shove your legs into the brown cargo shorts. They’re a little big, but they stay on at least. It takes you a little more work to unbutton the shirt and your fingers find the cross around your neck. You stop, and think about taking it off, too, but something stops you. You change into the green and yellow shirt and wipe your dirty hands off on the white button up.

You look at the skirt. It’s still so pretty, but that’s a bad thought. You’re not supposed to think stuff like that. That’s what got you in this mess in the first place. You step toward it, reaching, like you might pick it back up, and then think better of it, putting your hand on the gold cross around your neck and clenching it in your first until it hurts. You turn away and keep walking toward the mountains. Your heart hurts.

It seems weird how far away the mountains are. You feel like you’ve been walking forever and they don’t look any closer than they did from your window. Maybe that’s on purpose, though. Maybe the Hell God chose for you isn’t fire and brimstone at all, but walking forever through the woods alone with blood on your hands. You start crying again.

You feel bad about stealing the clothes. They weren’t yours and stealing is a mortal sin. So is killing, though. You hope Pastor Bill is okay.

The woods thin out again, and you find yourself looking out at a gas station. There’s a couple other houses further down the road, but everything is quiet and there’s no one on the street. Your tummy rumbles and you nibble your lip anxiously. You don’t have any money, but you already stole once, so maybe it’s too late to go to heaven anyway.

You leave the woods nervously, looking up and down the street, but nobody comes. You step towards the gas station. No one bursts out of the doors and tells you to leave.

The doors open automatically with a little ding when you step through. There’s a clerk behind the counter reading a magazine and she doesn’t look up when you walk in. You slip down an aisle and out of sight nervously.

There’s rows of chips and candy and beef jerky and a ton of stuff you’ve never been allowed to eat before. Your tummy rumbles again. You reach forward like it might burn you and pluck a chocolate bar off the shelf. Hershey’s. The wrapper is smooth in your hands. You step back around the shelf and peer down the aisle at the cashier. She still isn’t looking. You return to the aisle and out of her view.

You unwrap it slowly, careful of the crinkly packaging. When it hits your tongue you close your eyes. It tastes sweet and good, like wearing a skirt for the first time or when the basement door finally opens. You eat the whole thing and hide the wrapper in your pocket. You’re still hungry, though, so you grab the whole box and hold it close to your chest. You think about opening the fridge and taking a soda, but you’re afraid it will be loud when you do so you grab a warm bottle of water from the bottle shelf instead and tiptoe back to the door in your socks.

“Hey,” the cashier says, and you hear the magazine she was reading crinkle as she puts it down, “Where are your parents? Did you come in here alone?”

You run.

“Hey! I’m calling the cops!” she calls. A chair scrapes backward. You don’t look behind you and bolt straight back into the woods as fast as you can, panting, clutching a box of hershey bars to your chest with white knuckled fists. You don’t stop running until you’re gasping for air and you collapse onto your knees, spitting and hacking into the dirt as you try to take a breath. As soon as you can breathe through your nose you rip open another Hershey bar and practically inhale it, and another and another. You go through half the box before you can’t eat anymore. It’s all over your hands, mixed up with blood and you lie down on your stomach and put your face in your arms and cry.

You cry and cry until you’re empty inside and then you hiccup into your wet sleeves until thirst drives you to uncap the water bottle and chug the whole thing. Your tummy hurts again, a bright pain that eats you inside out. You wanna go home. You can’t go home. You wanna go home.

You pick up the box of Hershey bars and hold it to your chest, and then you keep walking towards the mountains.

You can’t walk anymore by the time the sun falls below the peak of the mountains no one ever comes back from, so you curl up around your box of chocolate bars under another tree. It’s a weeping willow, the prettiest kind of tree with long vines that brush the ground and sway back and forth in the breeze. The roots are dry and rope like the way they wrap around themselves. It’s not exactly comfortable, but you’re so tired you could sleep anywhere right now, even the basement.

You wake up when the sun is directly overhead. Your insides hurt and your head hurts and your legs are screaming. You want to curl back up and never wake up again, but the mountains _are_ closer, and you don’t know what else to do. You heave yourself back up to your feet. You think you might cry some more if you had anything left in you to cry with, but you don’t. You’re hollow.

You keep going.

You run out of Hershey bars by the end of the day, but, honestly, you’re not sure you could eat anymore, anyway. Your stomach hurts really badly and you don’t have any more water and you’re all alone, and you hold the cross around your neck in one hand and you pray for God to give you a sign to turn back, but it doesn’t come. Nothing stops you. No one finds you. Your feet feel like concrete.

You sleep again under a bush and when you wake up it’s because something is sniffing your leg. You scream and it runs away and you don’t know what it was for sure but you’re covered in mosquito bites and your legs, especially the twisted one are screaming and your stomach is screaming and your head is screaming and your throat is screaming and everything is screaming at you stop, stop, give up, please go home.

You kneel in the dirt and press your forehead to the ground and clutch the gold cross in both white knuckled fists and you pray to God to please, please give you a sign that you deserve to live, give you a sign you should turn around and save yourself, do anything, anything, anything to prove you shouldn’t climb the mountains no one ever comes back from.

The forest is silent.

You rip the cross from your neck, breaking the clasp, and scream, throwing it as hard as you can into the forest. You scream and scream and scream until your ragged throat makes you stop and you cry dry tears into your knees. God doesn’t care if you live. God wants you to die. He knows you’re evil. He knows the Devil is in your blood and always has been and you were never going to be good, you were never going to be happy, you were never going to get into Heaven. You’re just a Demon in progress and you always have been. You never stood a chance. God hates you and Jesus hates you and you hate you, too.

You stand up, swaying, and ball your hands into fists and summon all the strength left in your broken little body and you run. You run and run and run until the ground slopes up and the dirt becomes rocks and the sun pierces itself on the mountain tops and the sky bleeds sunset red and goes black. You run until you know you’re on the mountain. You’re going to climb to the top, the very very top where the peak meets the clouds and you’re going to scream at God that you deserved His love because you worked so hard for it, and He abandoned you, that if He truly didn’t care you’d go and work for the Devil and that you hate Him, you hate Him, you hate Him-

There’s an opening in the mountainside. A deep dark cave obscured by vines and piled bracken. You look up toward the distant peak, then back into the cave. You should really keep going. You have no reason to stop. You wonder what’s inside, though- a molten core of the mountains? The entrance to Hell and all the fire and brimstone and the Devil’s throne of blood and skulls? A secret society of monsters and beasts, hidden for centuries? Endless darkness?

You creep inside.

The cave isn’t actually dark- the roof is high, high above, whole houses tall and crackled with openings to the sky. Starlight filters through and casts spooky shadows on the rock faces. There’s slick moss and stagnant puddles all over the place, but also, cool slimy stalactites and stalagmites rising and falling from the ceiling and the floor, like teeth. Maybe the mountain’s alive and this is the mouth, and no one ever comes back because it eats them up for dinner.

The cavern is still and silent, though, and you keep walking. Behind the rows of rocky triangles and the haphazard placement of stone walls you see something, and curiosity pulls you forward until you realize it's a massive, circular hole. It’s weird, because it almost looks like it was cut here on purpose- it’s just too perfect of a circle to believe it formed naturally.

You approach it, cautiously, afraid the Devil might climb out at any moment and drag you down with him into Hell. You know you’re going to Hell, but you don’t really want to go just yet. Nothing climbs out. Nothing grabs you.

You peer over the edge and into its depths, squinting as you look for the bottom, but the darkness goes on forever.

“Huh,” you say, “That’s weird.”

You shift your weight off the leg that hurts more and stumble, caught on a root or a vine, something draped from a hole above.

“Hey-” you say, wavering, “N- wait-”

You fall.

You wake up on the ground, a rocky tiled floor, which is weird. Your whole body hurts, and hurts a lot, and you look up to see rows of huge lavender pillars that each hold a flickering torch. Maybe you died, or you fell right into Hell. You try to struggle to your feet but you just… can’t. You’re too tired, too empty, too done.

Something skitters in the darkness at the far end of the chamber.

“Hey!” you call, and your tongue feels thick behind your teeth. The skittering stops. You squint, trying to parse a silhouette from the shadows. The skittering starts again, slower this time, “Shoo!”

The shuffling pauses, begins, pauses, and then a shape steps forward. You still can’t quite make out any details but it certainly looks like a person.

“But… you’re hurt!” calls a voice. You lean on your elbows and try to sit up to prove you’re not, but you slip back down with a thump and a strangled little shout. The silhouette jumps forward- revealing some kind of fur covered beast with claws and huge fangs and red eyes.

You shriek and something in you manages to summon the strength to crawl backward over yourself a few feet, but no further. Your chest is heaving, panicked. The monster is about your height, bipedal, covered in ice white fur and goat like, with clawed hands and little horn nubs. It’s wearing a striped green and yellow turtleneck and khakis, which is weird.

“Hey!” it says, its mouth moving strangely around its teeth and its words, “You don’t gotta be scared! I’m not gonna hurt you!”

You can’t quite remember how to respond but you look around, and grab a rock and lift it above your head, arm trembling. The monster stops, putting its clawed hands up in front of its chest, pawpads out. They’re light pink and look soft, like a cat’s.

“Hey, I’m sorry- I didn’t mean to scare you,” it says, “I just, I heard you fall and I was worried and- you don’t, um, you don’t look so good. My mom knows a little healing magic, I was- you can put the rock down,” it says, but doesn’t step forward. You look at it, then look at the rock, then back at the monster. It might eat you. It might also be a devil and the servant of satan, one of the beasts of the apocalypse. It has the goat motif down. The Devil is supposed to be pretty goat like, but red.

If this thing is going to eat you or escort you to Satan, it’s too late. This is what you came here for; to join Satan’s army in Hell where you belong. Or die, you guess, but you hadn’t expected to be eaten by a monster. You put the rock down.

The monster smiles and kneels down next to you.

“I’m Asriel,” he says, muzzle stretched in a smile that lets you see rows of sharp dog teeth, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Char- uh, I’m not. I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” you say. Your voice is hoarse, like you’re dragging your words over sandpaper to get them out.

“Chara? It’s nice to meet you, Chara,” Asriel says. You think about correcting him on your name, but then you realize you just don’t really care. It probably won’t matter for much longer.

“Uh… nice to meet you, Asriel,” you say, awkwardly. He offers you an arm and a shoulder and helps you struggle to your feet. You have to lean on him heavily, especially because the leg you twisted in the first place is really not letting you use it at all anymore. He doesn’t seem to mind and helps you limp at your snail’s pace to the end of the corridor and through a purple stone archway.

“My mom will know what to do,” he tells you, “She knows some healing magic and she can call a doctor if she needs to. I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“Okay,” you say, awkwardly, not sure how else to respond. This is a weird situation. The archway leads to another, more open hallway, and you stumble, gasping, when you see even more monsters milling about. Massive frog beasts with eyes on their tummies, and they all turn to look at you when you enter.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Asriel says quickly, “They won’t hurt you either.” He raises his voice, looking at the frogs, “I’m bringing them to my mom!”

You crinkle up your face at the weird phrasing, “Them? I’m a boy.”

“Oh, okay, I hadn’t asked,” he says, nodding. Weird.

“You’re… a boy, aren’t you?” You ask, hesitantly.

“Yup!” says Asriel, “Mom says you’re always supposed to ask, though.”

“Oh,” you say, simply. That’s weird. It seems rude to you, but you don’t say so.

He leads you through a golden garden of flowers, but not the weed kind from your garden at home, these are grown on purpose, with soft petals and fluffy little centers. At the end of the garden there's a big black tree overflowing with lush green leaves, and when you pass that, too, there’s a house built into the face of the rock. It really looks like a proper house, too, with little windows and a porch and everything. Asriel helps you limp over the threshold and inside the foyer.

“Moooom!” he yells, “I need your help!”

The foyer is nice, like a regular house, but nicer than yours. There’s some stairs that go down and open hallways on the left and right; little hall tables with pots of flowers and photos of what look like more monsters in shiny frames. That makes your heart drop- there’s more of them.

“What’s wrong, my ch- oh my goodness!” you whip your head to the left and you’re struck by the scent of cinnamon and pie crust and then you see her: She’s over twice your height easily, a hulking figure of thick muscles covered by fur, with sharp horns pointed backward on her head and fangs even bigger than Asriel’s. She’s wearing a white apron with food stains on it and a purple long sleeve shirt rolled up above her elbows. Her hands are huge paws that you probably pick you up in just one of them like you were nothing. Your mouth goes dry and you instinctively struggle against Asriel to get away, but you’re too weak to do much of anything productive.

“You poor thing!” she cries, and hurries toward you, her grey skirt ruffling against the floor, “You look like you’ve been through something terrible!” She reaches for you, and you can see the huge white claws on each digit, coming closer and you scrunch your eyes shut and whimper.

Her pawpads are soft on your face, like marshmallows, and you can feel her claws have been filed down to round little nubs that don’t hurt at all. You get the weirdest feeling of your life where she touches your cheeks, like heat under your skin but not on it, and then it feels better. It still aches where your face hit the floor days ago, but that ache is gone now, and even your eyes which felt raw and puffy before feel a little better. She runs her paws over your sore ribs and your screaming arms and even your twisted ankle and your feet, still in your socks but definitely bloody and blistered.

You feel better.

“There you go, that should improve things a bit. Do you have a name, child?” She’s smiling. Her face looks soft around her teeth.

“His name is Chara!” Asriel supplies. You frown. That’s still not quite the truth, but not far enough you really want to correct it. You move your weight off of him and find you can stand on your own, albeit a bit shakily.

“That’s a lovely name. Chara, do you know where you are? Do you know how you got here?” She looking at you so expectantly, you don’t know how to avoid responding.

“I fell,” you croak. She looks confused for a moment, then something cold dawns over her face and she snaps back to her pleasant smile a little too quickly. Something’s wrong. Maybe this is when she eats you.

“Chara- are you human?”

It’s a weird question to be asked. No one’s ever asked if you were human before. “Um- I guess,” you answer.

“Okay,” she says, “Were you with your parents when you fell? Did they fall, too?” You shake your head, “Okay. Are you hungry, Chara?” You nod viciously. You don’t even care about whatever her ulterior motivations are, you’re starving.

She ushers you and Asriel, who hovers around you like you might collapse at any second, into the living room and then into the kitchen, where she sits you down at a table and then rummages through her cabinets.

“What do you like to eat, Chara?” she asks, “Do you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Pizza? What about chicken noodle soup?”

You’ve never had pizza, but you like soup and sandwiches. A PB&J would probably be faster,

though. “Peanut butter and jelly, please.”

“Let me make you something else while you eat that,” she says, pulling a jar of peanut butter down, “you look like you haven’t eaten in days, Chara.” She’s not exactly wrong.

“Soup, please?” You ask, hesitantly. You don’t want to overstay your welcome, but she did offer…

“Absolutely, little one,” she hums as she constructs your sandwich and she even pours some chips on the plate before she slides it in front of you. Your stomach has ached like a sharp black hole for days, but it isn’t until the smell of peanut butter hits you that you really feel exactly how ravenous you are and you practically choke trying to eat it. She puts a glass of water in front of you and you chug that, too.

“Not too fast, Chara, I know you’re hungry, but you don’t want to get an even worse tummy ache,” she says, oddly soothingly, and she rubs your back with her bear paws. It feels… nice.

You finish the sandwich, panting, and look back up at her as she sits down at the table across from you.

“Asriel, sweetie, why don’t you go find Daddy and tell him we have a visitor, okay?”

“Okay!” he says, puffing up, before he turns to you, “Daddy always knows what to do!” he scurries out the door and out of eyesight. She has you alone now, so if she wants to eat you, this is probably the time.

“My name is Toriel, Chara,” Toriel starts, “Do you know where your parents are?”

You think about it. Mrs. Gracie and Pastor Bill aren’t your parents. You don’t know who your papa is and you know your mama is bad and dead. You shake your head.

“Okay, that’s okay. Do you know why you were on the mountain? Did you get lost?”

You’re suddenly embarrassed to admit you were climbing the mountain to shout at God, and you don’t want to tell her you ran away because you hurt Pastor Bill. You don’t want her to make you leave, even if they eat you eventually.

“Yeah,” you say, “I got lost.”

“Okay,” she says, slowly, “Now, Chara, I don’t want to frighten you, but I want you to know something important.” There it is, this is when she tells you she’s going to eat you. “You’re in a place called the Underground right now. Unfortunately, the Underground was sealed off, a long long time ago. No one in the Underground can leave. Including you.”

Now this gives you pause. Perhaps this is Hell. Demons and beasts and lost souls aren’t allowed out. It would make sense. “Oh,” you say, dumbly.

“Please don’t worry that you’re in trouble or that you need to worry about who’s going to take care of you; the grownups will figure that out, okay? But I need you to understand, and I am so so sorry, you cannot go home.”

You chew on that, and you aren’t sure if you feel badly about it or not. You probably should. You should miss Mrs. Gracie and Pastor Bill. They took care of you and they didn’t have to. More evidence you’re a bad kid.

“Okay,” you say, “Can I please have some soup?” She looks a little surprised, but she nods and gets up to take a pot down from above the fridge. You nibble on your chips and relish the taste. You were never allowed to eat chips before. You can see why people like them so much.

“Are you allergic to anything, Chara?”

“No,” you say, because it’s probably true. She stirs the pot and you jump with the timer on the oven goes off.

“Oh! My pie, I nearly forgot!” Toriel cries, grabbing some oven mitts from the counter. You peer around her as she pulls out a pie and you can hardly stop yourself from salivating when you see it. It looks amazing, like something out of a magazine, and it smells better than anything you’ve ever smelled before. This can’t be Hell. Nothing that smelled that Heavenly could exist in Hell.

She puts the pie on the counter and looks back at you, then chuckles, “Would you like a slice, Chara? You can have one as soon as it’s cooled.” You nod your head as aggressively as you can. You want a slice of that pie maybe more than you’ve ever wanted anything before in your life.

“I found Daddy!” Asriel chirps, skipping back into the room, “Wow, Chara, you ate that really fast!”

You nod at him, and then a monster that dwarfed even Toriel steps through the threshold of the kitchen and your breath hitches in your chest. His horns are massive and so are his shoulders, and everything about him screams that you’ve finally met the Devil himself.

“Sh, shh, little one, don’t be frightened!” He says, in a booming voice that makes you shrink in your chair, “I will not hurt you.”

You don’t entirely believe him, but Toriel rushes over to you and pets your hair and whispers “Shh, shh, it’s okay,” until you calm down. The new monster hovers in the doorway, and Toriel points at him, kneeling beside your chair comfortingly, “This is my husband, Asgore. I bet you think we all look scary, huh? Gorey, make a silly face!”

Asgore sticks out his tongue and puffs up his furry cheeks, scrunching his eyes shut. You can’t help but titter a little laugh, and you feel better when you see his tongue isn’t forked, but flat, like a dog’s.

“See, little one, I’m not so scary. No one’s going to hurt you. Tori, is that a cinnamon pie I smell?”

“It is!” said Toriel, standing up, “Chara said he wanted a slice, too.”

You nod enthusiastically. Asgore smiles, “We can all have a slice. There’s plenty of pie to go around.”

Toriel goes back to the stove and stirs the soup pot again. Asriel skips over to you.

“I’m nine! How old are you?”

“Eight,” you say, softly.

“Wow! We could be twins!” he says. That sounds wrong, but he’s so excited you don’t want to correct him.

“My favourite colour is purple. What’s yours?”

“Yellow.”

“What’s your favourite food? Mine is Mom’s pie!”

You think about that for a second. A week ago you might have said it was fresh eggs, but today, you think differently. “Chocolate,” you say. Tastes like home and open basement doors.

“That’s cool,” says Asriel, “What’s your favourite cartoon? I like Pokemon!”

“I’m not allowed to watch TV,” you tell him. You feel guilty that you can’t answer the question.

“Oh,” says Asriel, a little deflated, “I’m sorry.”

“Why aren’t you allowed to watch TV?” Asgore asks, cocking his head to the side.

“Because TV exemplifies sin,” you say, matter of factly. Asriel and Asgore look confused, but Toriel turns to you and touches your shoulder.

“You can watch TV here, if you want, Chara.”

You aren’t sure if you should, but you nod anyway. “Do I live here, now?” You ask, uncertainly. She pauses, and then she and Asgore share a look. You’ve spoken out of turn. You need to learn when to keep your mouth shut.

“Well, we’ll see. But we’ll take care of you for now, okay?”

“Okay,” you say, shrinking into your shoulders. You hope they don’t hit you. Their paws are huge and they could probably hurt you really badly without even trying.

“For now, how about some soup?” Toriel says, taking the soup pot off the oven and pouring it into a bowl.

“What about the pie?”

“It still needs to cool. You wouldn’t want it to burn your tongue!” she says, sliding soup bowl in front of you with a spoon, “Now, remember to blow on it before you take a bite.”

You pick up your spoon and feel awkward, suddenly, with this many people watching you eat. You hesitate, spoon halfway to your mouth and eyes darting between the eyes watching you- but your hunger wins out.. It’s good, really good! You can hardly bear to slow down, it’s warm, the taste strong and not watered down, and the noodles aren’t burnt. You could eat everything in this house forever. It’s starting to look like they’re not going to eat you, at least not today, but if the plan is to fatten you up and eat you later, you’d be okay with that. Sounds like a great way to go.

“I’m going to go and make some calls, alright?” Asgore says to Toriel. She nods, and then turns to start washing the pots when he leaves. You wonder why she’s cleaning up when Asriel is here and should be doing it, or maybe even you. It’s puzzling. You just focus on your soup.

“I’m in the fourth grade!” Asriel boasts proudly, “What grade are you in?”

You’re not sure how to answer that either. Mrs. Gracie taught you your lessons, math and english and the Bible and all that, but you didn’t go to school. Do they have grades in homeschooling? They probably do, right? It would make sense. You have to be in a grade, but no matter how hard you wrack your brain you can’t recall Mrs. Gracie ever saying what it was. You shrug.

“Oh,” says Asriel, but charges on, undeterred, “Do you like books?”

You love books. You’ve read all of the Magic Tree House books and you’ve even read Warriors, but you don’t think Mrs. Gracie would have liked you reading the Magic Tree House books if she realized how much magic exactly was in them, and probably wouldn’t have liked Warriors either if she’d realized the cats are really violent and they didn’t believe in Jesus.

“I like the Magic Tree House books,” you say.

“Is that like the Magic School Bus?” he asks.

“No,” you say, “They’re different. They’re both just magical.”

Asriel laughs, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Magic is pretty common.”

“In books, yeah,” you say, between spoonfuls. Asriel cocks his head to the side.

“And in real life, too.”

“There’s no magic in real life,” you say, matter of factly. Asriel lifts up his cat paws, squishes up his face in concentration, and summons a tiny little magical flame between his hands.

“Yeah there is,” he says, and you stare at it, spoon hanging out of your mouth. You reach across the table and grab his paws to inspect them.

“How’d you do that?!” you ask, splaying his fingers apart like you might find the answer between them. He looks very proud of himself.

“I told you, it’s magic!”

“Can you do that?!” you ask Toriel, bewildered.

“That’s how I healed you,” she says, without looking up from her pot.

“Huh,” you say, uncertain how to integrate this information into your worldview. “Is the pie cool yet?”

“Almost,” she says, and you try to think patient thoughts. You’re almost done with your soup. Asriel’s quizzing of your favourite everything continues, undeterred by your lack of favourites. After what feels like a century, she finally opens a drawer and pulls out a knife that you find it hard to look away from, announcing that the pie is ready.

It’s the only thing that can distract you from the sheen of the blade. Warm yellow-brown crust that smells like cinnamon and sugar and flour and everything good and pure. She sets down a slice on a white and purple china plate in front of you first and you wonder why she served you before herself or Asriel, but you don’t have time to dwell on it, because as soon as the first bite is in your mouth, that’s your whole world. You close your eyes and let the taste rest on your tongue, trying to memorize it. It’s as good as it smelled, as it looked- it’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten.

You wonder how you managed to live this long without experiencing a moment this good.

“Do you like it?” she asks, chuckling. You realize your eyes are still closed and you jolt, embarrassed.

“Yes, ma’am,” you say, “It’s amazing.”

“Well, thank you, Chara,” she laughs, sitting down with her own slice next to Asriel, who already has pie all over her face. You’re kind of surprised he’s using a fork. You sort of expected him to eat it whole like a real monster, but him and his mom both keep acting like people. You don’t know how to feel about it, but you feel… good.

“I called the doctor, she’s on her way,” Asgore says gently, coming back through the door. Is the doctor for you?

“I don’t need a doctor,” you say, perplexed, “I feel fine.”

“Well, we just want to make sure!” says Asgore, smiling, “Ooh, pie.” He goes to the counter to take a slice. You scrunch up your face, confused.

“Why?” You ask.

“Because you seemed a little roughed up, and healing magic can only go so far,” Toriel says, touching your hand with her paw. It feels reassuring. That’s weird. You pull your hand away.

“But you’re not my Mama. You don’t need to worry about me,” you argue.

“I don’t have to be your Mama to worry about you,” she says. She has a weird look in her eyes that makes you uncomfortable, “You deserve to be worried about, Chara.”

That’s wrong. That’s really wrong. You wonder if she knows that’s wrong. You want to tell her, but all you can do is shake your head and look at your plate.

“The doctor just wants to come and take a look at you. It won’t take long and she won’t hurt you. Is that okay? Will you let the doctor take a look?” She’s insistent. You don’t know how to refuse her. She’s been so kind to you, kinder than you deserve. You can’t tell her no.

You nod without looking up.

“Thank you, Chara,” she says, “Do you want another slice?” You nod again, even though your belly is flipping. She gives you just a little one and you’re grateful, because you’re starting to feel really full. You haven’t been full in a long time.

After you finish she insists you let her do the dishes, and asks if you want to watch cartoons with Asriel in the living room while you wait for the doctor. You aren’t sure you should, but you still don’t know how to say no, so you just nod. He shows you a VHS tape of The Magic School Bus that looks really beat up, but he treats it like a delicate artifact in a museum and puts it in the VHS player.

To your surprise, you enjoy yourself. You didn’t realize why other kids liked cartoons so much until now, but you’ve definitely been missing out. You don’t see the exemplification of Sin Pastor Bill and Mrs. Gracie warned you about, either. Sure, there’s magic and stuff, but it’s educational. You wonder why you weren’t allowed to see stuff like this before.

There’s a knock at the door. You almost forget to make yourself scarce, you’re so interested in the TV, but you remember, and you scramble to your feet and hide in the kitchen.

“Chara?” Asriel calls from the living room. That kind of annoys you. Doesn’t he know to get out of the way when there’s guests?

“It’s just the doctor, little one, you can come out. It’s okay.” It’s Asgore’s voice, from the hallway. You knead your hands together, working your thumb anxiously against your palm in little circles and you step back out into the other room.

“Hello,” you say, keeping your eyes down. You try not to look startled by the new monster in the foyer, but mostly you’re just surprised this one isn’t another furry white goat monster. This one is a big yellow-gold lizard in a doctor’s coat. She has little spines on the back of her head tied into a pointy ponytail and sharp front teeth. She puts a black wool coat on the coat rack and waves at you.

“Hello, Chara,” she says, “I’m Dr. Pellas. I’m here to take a look at you, if that’s okay.”

You look at Toriel and she nods, smiling. You take a few hesitant steps forward and she ushers you to a chair by the fireplace. Asgore takes Asriel’s hand and tells him it’s bath time. Toriel is the only other one that stays in the room with you and Dr. Pellas, and that makes you nervous.

“You know, Chara,” said Dr. Pellas, “I have a little girl about your age. Her name is Suzy. Sometimes she falls down and hurts herself, and doesn’t tell me because she’s embarrassed.” Dr. Pellas kneels down in front of you in the chair, “Now, I’m not mad at her, but sometimes cuts and scrapes you think are little are actually worse than you thought, and when she doesn’t tell me, it means I can’t help her as much as I want to. So I want you to tell me about everything you know, okay? If you have any cuts or bruises, even a tummy ache, I want you to tell me. Can you do that for me, Chara?”

Dr. Pellas has a big mouth like the lizards you would see in the garden. She has the two sharp fangs on the top and bottom of the front of her mouth, but the rest of her teeth look flat. Her eyes are big and orange-gold. You hesitate, then look at Toriel. Dr. Pellas’s big gold eyes flick over to her, and she flicks her tongue out like a snake’s.

“Your majesty- would you mind waiting in the other room?” She asks. Toriel hesitates, looks at you, looks at Dr. Pellas, then back at you.

“Just call if you need me, okay?” She says, gently. You shrink into the couch as she steps out of eyesight.

“Okay, Chara. What do you want to show me?”

You pull up your sleeves to your elbows and show her the dirt stained bandages on your wrists, the criss-cross scars up and down your arms from burns and knives and broken wood, covered by mismatched and undersized bandaids that don't fix the problem. Dr. Pellas takes a sharp intake of breath, before reaching up to take your arms gently in her clawed hands.

“This sure is a lot of booboos, Chara,” she says softly. No one has ever said the word booboo to you before. You can infer the meaning but not the intention. “How did you get these?

You shrug, and don’t make eye contact.

“Can I look under these bandages?” She asks, touching the dressing on your right wrist with such tenderness it surprises you her alligator claws are dextrous enough to do so at all. You nod again, and stare at your lap as she peels back the gauze. You watch in your peripherals as her jaw tightens and her hands still but you don’t look up. You don’t say anything.

“These are pretty icky cuts,” she says, “They look like they’ve reopened a few times. Was this an accident?”

You don’t say anything.

“Did you hurt yourself playing?”

You don’t say anything.

“Did someone do this to you?”

“I was bad,” you whisper hoarsely, “I deserved it.”

“You didn’t deserve this, sweetie,” she says, unwrapping your other wrist, “You’re a little boy.”

“I was bad,” you repeat, staring at your lap, shoulders hunched tight. She opens up her bag and takes out some things.

“Is it okay if we take your shirt off so I can clean all these up? You can put it back on when I’m done, and you can say no, Chara.”

You take your shirt off silently, and she seems taken aback by the basketball sized bruise on your stomach from where Pastor Bill hit you. Dr. Pellas uses a damp cloth and some q-tips to clean out your cuts and scrapes, and then squeezes some kind of gel on them- it’s probably Neosporin, so you tell her you already put Neosporin on, and she says that was good but puts this gel stuff on anyway. You put your shirt back on.

“Is there any other booboos you want to tell me about, Chara?” She asks, gently. You hike your legs up into the chair and take off your dirty socks and show her your feet. They’re sore and blistered and bloody from all the walking you did. There’s also your ankle. It feels better ever since Toriel magicked it, but it’s still sore. She holds it tenderly in her hand and presses with her claws lightly in different places and you tell her where it hurts. She cleans up the cuts on your feet, too.

“Okay, Chara, why don’t you hang out here for just a second while I talk to Toriel, okay?” Dr. Pellas asks, standing up. You nod and wait patiently while she steps into the other room. You don’t hear anything until Toriel comes back in and quickly crosses the room to you, taking your hand in hers.

“Dr. Pellas says you’re being very good,” she says, but her smile is wavering, “Would you like to take a bath when Asriel’s done, and then Dr. Pellas can finish up taking care of you?” A bath sounds nice. You haven’t taken a bath instead of a shower in a really long time. You nod.

“Let’s watch more Magic School Bus until he’s done, okay?” she asks. You nod enthusiastically, and she turns the tv back on before she goes back to speak to Dr. Pellas again in hushed tones you know means you’re not supposed to listen, so you don’t.

Eventually the door down the hall opens and Asriel skips out in a fluffy towel that dwarfs him like stuffed animal and Toriel ushers you toward the bath after she’s emptied out and refilled the water for you.

It’s warm, but not hot. You kind of miss the boiling water you would shower in and the way it would make your skin itch with pain, but the warm bath is nice too. She left you some rubber ducks to play with and an inexcusable selection of soaps to choose from.

You feel better after a bath and you pick out a lilac towel from the linen closet. Someone’s put fresh pajamas on the counter for you, and you pick them up, hesitantly. They’re soft and brown and gold, and you pull on the longsleeved shirt and shorts, careful not to pull any seams or injure your borrowed clothes. You open the door and find Toriel and Dr. Pellas chatting in the living room. They smile and wave, and you go back over and let Dr. Pellas cover all your cuts and rope burns in fresh, clean bandages. You pull your sleeves down over the gauze on your wrists self consciously when she’s done.

“Now, Chara, Toriel tells me you had a real big dinner, huh?” You nod, “I want you to keep on eating lots of nice big dinners for me, okay? I bet that’s probably not going to be hard!” she smiles. Her face unsettled you at first, but now it’s making you feel safe. You nod. “Good! Now, I want to see you again in a couple of days in my office, is that okay?”

You think about it, then look at Toriel. She nods, so you look back at Dr. Pellas and you nod too. She smiles and ruffles your hair pleasantly.

“Okay. Try and keep off that foot, okay? Miss Toriel here is going to keep on healing it regularly, and it should be okay in a few days, but it’s still gonna hurt just a little bit until then. Do you understand?” you nod, and she reaches into her bag and pulls out a lollipop. A red one. she hands it to you and you take it excitedly, ripping it out of the wrapper and chomping down. She chuckles, and stands up, retrieving her coat from the coat rac.

“Thank you again so much for coming on such short notice, Pellas,” Toriel says as Dr. Pellas packs herself up to leave. Dr. Pellas puts a hand on Toriel’s shoulder.

“I’m glad I did. You remember everything I told you?”

“I do.”

“Good. I want to see him again on Tuesday, I want to run a couple of tests and maybe send him home with some vitamins.” Toriel nods as Dr. Pellas speaks, and then she bids her adieu.

“You were very brave,” Toriel says, turning toward you, “Do you want to play with Asriel?” You nod.

“Asriel says you can have his bed tonight,” Asgore says, ushering Asriel into the hall from one of the rooms, “And he’ll sleep with us.”

“I don’t mind!” Asriel pipes up, excited. You feel something weird in your chest. You don’t know what it is. You and Asriel finish the video tape, and then he shows you all his toys. None of them interest you. He has a lot of stuffed animals. He has a macaroni picture of a flower though, and you perk up at that, because you think art projects like that look like a lot of fun and you hope you’ll get to try one.

At some point, you start to yawn. You’d forgotten how tired you were- the excitement of everything you had found had filled you with a new wave of wakefulness, but your days of walking were catching up to you, and you start to sway. Asriel gives you a hug when he leaves and that makes you feel weird again. Toriel tucks you into bed and makes sure the blanket is snug and warm around you, and turns the light out when she leaves. It makes you feel weird. It all makes you feel weird.

You don’t have much time to ponder the weirdness, though, because sleep finally takes you.

When you wake up, it’s to the smell of cheese and eggs cooking and your tummy rumbles. You can’t even imagine how you’re still hungry after how much you ate yesterday. You slip out of bed and then turn around to make it nice and neat again like you found it, before creeping to the door. You listen outside first, and you hear faint voices laughing, so you open it carefully, and pad into the hall, following the voices to the dining room.

“Good morning, Chara!” Asgore chimes, and Asriel waves, his face puffed up and full of the scrambled eggs on his plate. He’s dressed much nicer than he was last night, in a purple vest and a collared white shirt underneath.

“Good morning,” you say, looking around for Toriel. She peeks her head around the corner of the kitchen.

“Would you like some eggs, Chara?” she asks, brightly. You love eggs and you nod. “Wonderful! Pepper, or no pepper?”

“Pepper!” you say, perking up. She dips back into the kitchen and you hover uncertainly, not sure where to go.

“Come, sit down,” Asgore says, patting a place on the table. Relieved, you scurry over and slide into a chair next to Asriel.

“I’ve got school today,” says Asriel, “But Mom says you don’t have to go yet.”

You cock your head to the side, “What’s your school like?”

Asriel gestures with his hands, still holding his fork, scattering eggs all over the place. Asgore frowns and you flinch, but he doesn’t hit him. “It’s real big, and all the kids in the Underground go there!! I have lots of friends and my favourite subject is art!” You’re distracted, staring at Asgore as he silently cleans up Asriel’s cast off eggs with a napkin, but doesn’t scold him for making a mess.

“Oh,” you say, when you notice Asriel looking at you expectantly, “that’s cool.”

Toriel comes in holding a plate and you start to get up, but she tuts and you snap back into your seat, but she just puts the plate down in front of you, loaded with warm, peppered eggs.

“Do you want orange juice? Milk? Water?” she asks.

“Orange juice, please,” you say, softly. She smiles at you, like it isn’t a big deal. When she goes back into the kitchen you dig into your eggs like they could vanish at any minute.

“Wow, you sure were hungry!” Asriel says, and you pause, fork in your mouth and look up at him, bashfully.

“Yeah,” you say, swallowing.

Asriel eats the last bite on his plate and picks it up, bounding into the kitchen. You keep eating yourself, mindful to slow down. Asgore gets up and ruffles your hair pleasantly. You smile and he turns away.

“Alright Asriel, it’s time to go!” he says. You can see him in the foyer. He pulls a big purple cape off of the coat rack and clips it around his shoulders. Asriel comes hopping out of the kitchen and grabs a backpack from the floor in the hallway, and together they head out the front door.

“Bye, Chara! I’ll see you later!!” he cries, waving at you. You wave back.

“Do I have to go to school?” You ask, when Toriel comes back in the room.

“Well, not today,” she says, “Do you want to?”

You think about it, “I think so.”

“You can go to school if you want, Chara. You might have fun, and make some new friends.”

You haven’t had friends before. That does sound nice.

“Can I stay here?” you ask, hopefully.

Toriel pauses. Her silence continues and you shrink into your shoulders, afraid you’ve spoken out of turn.

“Do you want to stay here?” She asks.

“You’re nice to me,” you tell her. She gives you this weird look and reaches across the table to take your hand in hers.

“Then you can stay here, Chara. I promise I’ll take care of you.”

You feel weird, but good, and you smile at her. She stands up to go back into the kitchen and you finish your eggs, before taking your plate in after her. She’s loading the dishwasher, so you wash your plate off in the sink to help.

“Oh, Chara, you don’t have to worry about that, I’ll do it,” she says, but you shake your head.

“I don’t mind.”

You do the dishes together and she hums something softly. When you’re done she takes you shopping to buy new clothes and a comforter. You keep expecting yourself to be surprised or scared of all the monsters you meet, but everyone is so nice, you can’t find the fear inside of you.

She gets you a bunch of new clothes and a comforter with The Magic School Bus on it, and she even buys you a chocolate bar in the check out line. Lots of people say hi to you. You mostly hide behind Toriel. You aren’t used to meeting this many people. It’s a little scary.

When you get back home there’s some moving people there with a new bed already. You think maybe she called them while you were out. It gets moved into Asriel’s room and you help make the sheets neat, and she helps you fold all your new clothes up and put them in the dresser. It all seems like a lot. You nibble your chocolate bar and try not to think too much.

You’re sleepy again when you’re all finished and you get to take a nap in your new bed. It’s really soft, and the house smells like pork chops when she starts cooking, and you drift off to sleep feeling weirdly safe for once.

The first few days you stay at home with Toriel and help out with the chores and shopping. You eat better than you think you ever have before and you do art projects on the kitchen table with Asriel. Asgore shows you how to pick apples off the the tree out front, hoisting you up on his shoulders so you can reach. You see Dr. Pellas again, and she takes some of your blood from your finger and says she’s proud that you’ve been eating. You’re so excited to go to school by the time it comes around. You have a uniform that fits and a new haircut and you can’t wait to meet new people.

You bounce on your heels as Asgore clips his cloak around his neck, and you hold Asriel’s hand and then you’re out the door. You go past the market where you’ve gone with Toriel and into the town proper, through a busy market street full of strangers that wave and smile at you. You hide behind Asgore self consciously, but Asriel holds your hand and you feel okay.

The school isn’t very large, but its a pretty building with sculpted molding like flowers and big double doors that stand open with some grown-ups that look like teachers. Asgore lets go of your hand at the door and gives you a big hug.

“Asriel can walk you the rest of the way to your classroom. Is that okay?” he asks you. You nod, and he ruffles your hair affectionately. Asriel tugs you away down the hall and you skip after him, heart aflutter. There’s so many people here, all kinds of people, big fluffy bird monsters and tiny lizard monsters and cat people and dragons and living fire and all sorts of people. Your classroom is down the D hall and it has bright colourful drawings on the wall, self portraits. Asriel’s is your favourite.

There’s lots of kids inside and they look up when you enter, before they swarm you, bursting with questions.

“Are you really a human?”

“Do you eat food like us?”

“Can humans fly?”

You try to answer as many as you can, but it's hard to keep up. There’s a girl here that looks like a lizard, yellow scales and no arms. She looks like Dr. Pellas.

“Hey-” you say, to her, and she perks up, “Are you Suzy?”

“Huh? Yeah! How did you know that?” she asks. She looks like she thinks you might say humans could read minds and you think about telling her that.

“Your mom is my doctor,” you say instead, “You look like her.”

She smiles lopsidedly, “Oh, duh. So- what’s your name, huh?”

“I’m Chara,” you smile. The students buzz your name excitedly and something bubbles inside you, but then the teacher comes in the door and everyone scurries to their seats.

She’s a weird shape of ice and chicken and she flutters her wings and draws a smiley face on the board with magic chalk.

“Good morning, class!” she chirps.

“Good morning, Ms. Snowdrake!” the class chimes back. You mumble along nervously.

“We have a new student today,” she says, and even though she has a beak, you can tell she’s smiling. You shrink a bit into your desk and Asriel and Suzy snicker. “His name is Chara! He’s a human from the surface! I’m sure you all have questions for him, but right now, it’s class time, so he gets to ask us all the questions, okay?”

“O-kay!” your class chimes back. You smile nervously.

“I think, since we have a new student today, it might be fun to talk about something most of us already know!” Ms. Snowdrake continues.

“Once upon a time,” she starts, waving her feathers ominously, “There was a big war between the monsters and the humans!” Someone in the class says “ooooh” like. ghost. “The monsters lost, and the humans used special magic to seal all of the monsters into the Underground.” This peaks your interest. Humans? Magic?

“How did they do that?” you blurt out, forgetting to raise your hand. You sink sheepishly back into your seat, embarrassed, but Ms. Snowdrake doesn’t chastise you.

“Good question, Chara! Monsters are made up mostly of their soul, while humans are made mostly of water! That’s why Monsters can use the power of our souls to do all sorts of things!” she raised her wings up, and snow erupted forth, beautiful little flakes that glittered in the light and burst like a halo of fireworks. “Seven humans used _their_ soul power to make the Barrier. However, because their souls are so much smaller, it took the whole thing to do. Those humans made a big sacrifice doing something they believed was right.”

You hate those humans immediately. It fills you up like the water you’re apparently made of.

“Can you break the barrier with Monster Magic?” you ask, cocking your head to the side.

“Unfortunately, no,” says Ms. Snowdrake, “Monsters power is much weaker than humans. It would probably take all of the souls of all of the Monsters in the Underground to equal one human soul! To break the barrier, we would need to present it with a force greater than the force that created it. If we’re lucky, six humans as kind as good as you might help us do that one day.”

Ms. Snowdrake smiles at you. Everyone smiles at you. You smile back, but you feel ice in your tummy. They want you to save them.

When school is over, Asgore picks you up, literally, and carries you home on his shoulders. You feel like you’re the tallest person in the world.

Toriel laughs a lot at dinner while you tell her all about your day, food in your mouth. You don’t tell her about the Barrier story. Asriel pipes up to help you because there’s so much you want to tell her and she makes butterscotch-cinnamon pie for dessert.

The next day when you get to class you say hi to Suzy and she shows you her Speed Racer lunchbox her brother found in the dump and gave her for her birthday last year. You tell her it’s really cool. She asks if you want to come over to her house after school and play, and you say you’ll have to ask your mom. She says your moms can talk later and Asriel asks if he can come, too. You laugh and pull his ears and say he’s silly if he thinks you’d go anywhere without him. Suzy smiles.

Toriel calls Dr. Pellas and then tells you you can go over for a playdate on Saturday. You’ve never been on a playdate before. You aren’t sure if you should bring anything but Asriel says you just bring yourself. You can do that.

On Saturday Toriel walks you to Suzy’s house and says hi to Dr. Pellas in the kitchen. Suzy shows you her room. She has a bunch of posters for tv shows and old video tapes, and a knit blanket on her bed that looks like Toriel might have made it, but you aren’t sure and you think it might be weird to ask. She has a toy chest with a bunch of plastic swords and you all decide to play pirates. Asriel gets a big swashbuckler and an eyepatch and Suzy grabs a plastic fencing sword in her teeth and a big red bandana. You grab a plastic dagger and a black cape and pretend to be a sneaky pirate. You play in the backyard in the grass and the sandbox is your ship and the grass is the salty sea that none of you have ever seen before. You take turns holding Toriel’s video camera and make a movie about your crew sailing the high seas. Toriel and Dr. Pellas wave from the kitchen at you and you beam.

The next saturday Suzy comes to your house and the three of you make macaroni portraits. Yours is the best, but you tell Asriel his is. He knows you’re lying and teases you for being a softie. She wants to play in the basement, but your hands start shaking as soon as she says the word and you refuse to go down there. Eventually you start crying and have to go to your room, and Toriel takes her home and you feel really embarrassed. Asriel keeps asking what’s wrong, but you can’t tell him.

You choose the piano in music class. Asriel plays the drums because he loves to smash them, but you like the finesse a piano requires. You like that it seems impressive and when you play the keys and make a pretty sound people think it’s cool and tell you so and you get lots of attention, so you practice it a lot.

One day at school you’re practicing the piano while you wait for Asgore to pick you up, and Asriel is sitting next to you, watching your fingers on the key.

“Write me a song,” he says.

“Huh?” you say, looking up, “I don’t know how to write a song.”

“It doesn’t have to be a good one,” he says, still staring at the keys and smiling.

You screw up your face, thinking, then look back down at your hands, awkwardly, and hit “D.”

His ears perk up as the note carries and you pause, then roll your hand and hit “A” an octave above, then back down to “G, D, Gb, Gb, G,” tapping the nearby keys with one hand. It’s a nice little melody and you make a mental note of the way the sound feels in your hand. Asriel closes his eyes and listens to it with a pleasant smile.

“You wrote me a nice song,” he laughs.

“Only cuz I like ya,” you say, and he laughs.

You and Suzy and Asriel do a group project for class. You spend all day in your house spread out over the living room floor pasting cut-out letters to posterboard, explaining the water cycle. You draw crayon pictures of evaporation and Asriel uses glitter to make a big shiny yellow sun. Suzy has excellent penmanship and does most of the writing with her feet so it will be legible. You take pictures of the rain outside to use for the folding sides as an example, and when it’s time to go home, you and Asriel walk Suzy home by yourselves.

The rain has subsided to a light drizzle by the time you open the door, but halfway there it starts pouring and you hide under an overpass. Asriel and Suzy both squeal with delight when you pull a folding umbrella out of your waistband. You offer it to Suzy and she snorts and wiggles to emphasize she doesn’t have any arms. You blush, embarrassed and hold it yourself the rest of the way.

Once you’ve dropped her off you bolt back to the house with the umbrella and make Asriel chase you, hollering behind you that he’s getting wet. You both have to take baths.

The next saturday Toriel takes you to dinner at a restaurant with Asriel because he needs some new pants. You’re looking at the menu when you see a guy at another table with some kind of cheesy potato soup thing and you cock your head at it.

“Hey,” you say to Asriel, “What’s that guy eating?”

“Huh? What guy?” he asks, looking up from the kiddie menu he’s drawing on. You nod your head toward a blue ghost-like man that looks like a semi transparent sheet.

“Him. He’s got a soup thing and it looks really good.”

“That’s not a guy,” Asriel says, “That’s Mx. Devian from school. They’re not a girl or a boy.”

You scrunch up your face, “What? You have to be a girl or a boy.”

“Nuh-uh,” says Asriel indignantly, and you notice Toriel watching quietly, “It’s called “nonbinary” and it means they’re not a boy and they’re not a girl and we’re supposed to call them they. Mom says if someone says they’re a girl or a boy or something else you have to respect that no matter what.”

“That sounds fake,” you persist, chewing on your lip, thoughtfully. Surely it must be? You have to be a girl or a boy.

“It’s not fake, Chara! Don’t be mean.”

“Alright, alright,” you say, annoyed, “Sorry.”

Toriel tells you that it’s called loaded baked potato soup and you order that. It’s really good. That night you lie in bed and wonder what it means to not be a girl or a boy, and then what it means to be a boy.

The next day you pair off with Suzy for group work.

“Psst,” you whisper to her, and she looks up from the math sheet you’re working on together, “What’s it like being a girl?”

She thinks about it for a second, “I mean, I don’t think it’s any different from being a boy. But I’ve never been a boy, so I don’t really know.”

“Huh,” you say, staring at the worksheet, “How do you know you’re not a boy?”

She gives you a funny look but then thinks about it really seriously, “I guess if I think about it, when people call me she it just feels okay, but if someone called me he I would feel kinda uncomfy. So I think that means I wouldn’t wanna be a boy.”

“Huh.”

“Do you think you’re not a boy?” She asks, suddenly serious.

“No,” you say quickly, embarrassed.

“Do you not wanna be a boy?”

That’s a different question entirely. You chew your lip but go back to the worksheet. She doesn’t push it.

You don’t talk about it again for another three weeks but you can’t stop thinking about it. All you can think about is the soft black skirt you ran away in and how nice it felt. Boys aren’t supposed to wear girl clothes. You don’t think you’re a girl, but suddenly you aren’t sure you’re a boy either. It makes your stomach turn and you don’t know what you’re supposed to think and you really hope if you just keep ignoring it it will go away, but it doesn’t.

Toriel is reading a book in bed by lamplight when you knock on her door anxiously. She looks up, red eyes behind her glasses surprised.

“Oh, Chara, dear, hello. Do you need something?”

“Can I come sit with you?” You ask. She gives you an odd look, then folds her book up with a bookmark from the nightstand and puts it down. She scoots over and pats the bed. You crawl in next to her and put your head on her tummy. She’s warm and soft and you feel safer already.

“Is everything alright, my child?”

“Am I your child?” you ask, suddenly. She seems surprised.

“Of course you are, Chara. I’m so happy to have you as a part of my family, and I love you very much.”

Your eyes water and you bury your face into her dress so she can’t see, “Can I… can I call you mom?”

She makes a little strangled noise and you think she’s going to say no at first, but she leans forward and hugs you tightly.

“Of course,” she says, and you can hear the emotion in her voice, “Of course you can.”

“Would you still love me if I wasn’t a boy?” You ask.

“I will always love you, Chara, no matter what you are,” She says, hugging you to her chest, her hand against the back of your head. You take long deep breaths and don’t say anything for awhile.

“I don’t wanna be a boy anymore,” you say, finally. “I don’t.”

“Then you don’t have to be,” she says softly. “All you have to be is Chara.”

Toriel talks to your teacher for you and to Asgore and Asriel and Asriel pokes fun at you for saying that was a fake thing before so you pull his ears and he pulls your hair and you both laugh about it. You feel good. You feel happy.

It’s almost strange to be happy. You feel like a different person completely, like the person you were before didn’t exist at all. Maybe Charlie did die when he fell. Maybe you are Charlie. Maybe you aren’t. Maybe you’re someone new, or maybe you were always there.

“Hey, Azzy,” you say to Asriel, “I think we should make a pie for dad’s birthday tomorrow.”

“A butterscotch pie?”

“Yeah!” you say, “Mom and Dad are going out to dinner tonight, and while they’re gone we should make a super secret surprise butts pie, all by ourselves. He’ll love it!”

“Yeah!” Asriel says, hopping out of bed, “You always have the best ideas, Chara.” You beam and toss off the blankets and put your socked feet on the floor and pace back and forth quickly.

“I’ll ask Mama for the recipe before they leave, and then we can make it while they’re gone.”

Asriel bleats excitedly at the back of his throat, pressing the beans of his paws together and patting his feet against the ground. You both rush out of your room to let your mother know while dad is getting ready for work. She thinks it's a wonderful idea and says she’ll write you a recipe while you’re at school and hide it under your pillow.

You spend all day at school shaking your leg in excitement and whispering to Asriel all your ideas. He doodles little pies in the margins of his notes. It’s all you can think about. He’s going to be so proud of you.

Dad picks you up from school and it takes everything in you to resist blurting it out, but you bite your tongue and manage to keep it to yourself. When you get home, Mama puts on a nice outfit and Dad does too and they kiss (gross) and they leave you home alone. As soon as the door shuts you run to your bedroom and yank the journal page Mama wrote the recipe on out, and practically fall on your face running back to the kitchen to show Asriel.

“Okay, it says here we gotta make the crust first, which makes sense. Have you ever used the oven before?” You ask. Asriel nods.

“I’ve helped mom make snail lasagna before once or twice. You preheat it!”

“Awesome! Okay, you need to preheat the oven to 375 degrees. While that’s getting warm, let’s make the crust!” You say, and grab a chair from the table and drag it across the floor to the cabinet to grab the flour. Asriel messes with the oven and then turns back to you.

“What else do we need?” He asks.

“Okay… it says we need some ice water, a quarter tablespoon of salt, some flour, and, uh, hm.” You stop, rereading it.

“And what?”

“And then it says we need one “cup butter.”

“What’s cup butter?”

“I dunno,” you say, “do you think it’s different from regular butter?”

“It’s gotta be,” he says, “Why specify if it isn’t?”

“That’s a good point,” you say, “And you wouldn't put butter in a cup, anyway. It’s like, in a bar, right? so you wouldn’t be able to measure right because it’s all square.”

“Yeah, so do you think it’s like, a liquid butter maybe? That you would put in a cup?”

You snap your fingers, “Hey, I got it! I bet she means one “buttercup!”

“Oh, yeah!” Asriel says, his ears swivelling around as he brightens, “That must be why Daddy has a whole bunch outside, just like the tomatoes and stuff he grows, it’s for cooking!”

“Yeah, that’s gotta be it!” you say, “Okay, how about you go outside and pick one and I’ll start putting the stuff in a bowl?”

“Got it!” Asriel says, saluting you before he runs for the door.

You pour the flour and the salt and the water, and Asriel runs back in with the buttercup while you’re stirring.

“Do you think we should mash it up?” He asks.

“Yeah, I think so,” you say, and Asriel tugs Mom’s mortar and pestle off the counter and starts mashing the flower up. When he’s done you scrape it all into the batter, which is really dry. You put a little more water in, just in case, and then pack it into one of the pie tins from under the counter.

Asriel manages to light the fire for the stovetop with his magic fire paws and you figure out how to put a pot inside another pot for a double boiler like her drawing shows you. This is a lot more complicated than you thought, but while the crust is in the oven you make the filling really carefully. You think you got some of the measurements wrong and you needed another buttercup from outside, so Asriel picks a few just in case you need more again later, but you don’t.

When the two of you are all done, it’s really lumpy but you’re so proud of it. The two of you are laughing and covered in flour and you’ve made a huge mess of the kitchen but you finished the pie. You put a little whipped cream and cinnamon on top, but it was still hot so that melts really quickly and you wished you’d waited until they got home, but that doesn’t take much longer.

“Surprise!!” the two of you yell when the door opens. Asriel’s holding the pie and you’re making jazz hands toward it, beaming with pride.

“What!” Dad says, lighting up like Christmas, “Did you make this for me?” He takes the pie from Asriel and smells it dramatically. Mom comes inside behind him, laughing. “It smells amazing!”

“Mama gave me the recipe, so it’ll taste just as good as hers!” you say, and he licks his lips.

“Well then, let’s dig in, shall we?” he says, picking up Asriel with his other arm and carrying him, giggling, to the table. You hurry behind him.

“Sorry we made a mess, Daddy, we’ll clean it up, promise,” Asriel says, and you nod vigorously.

“We can all clean up together after we have some of the tasty pie my children made me,” he says, ruffling Asriel’s hair. Mama grabs some plates and forks from the kitchen and comes and sits with you.

He cuts up a slice for everyone and you insist on grabbing some candles from the kitchen and singing happy birthday. You all take a bite at the same time and you can tell from the winces no one likes it. It does taste pretty awful. you really screwed up, and silently, fork still in your mouth, you start to cry. This was supposed to be special.

“Oh, Chara, dear, don’t cry,” Mom says,

“You did your best-”

“Well,” Dad says, puffing up, “I for one think it’s delicious.” He eats the whole thing to prove it, opens his massive lion-goat jaw that you thought would gobble you up in a single bite once, and he eats the whole pie, just like that. “Mm. Good,” he says, with a face that makes it look like he’d rather eat a tire. You’re still crying, but you smile as you sniffle and hug him big.

It’s his birthday, so he relaxes on the couch while Mom goes into the kitchen with you and Azzy to clean up. You’re sweeping up the flour, which is everyone else’s least favourite task for some reason, and Asriel is wiping down the counter when Mom picks up one of the leftover buttercups.

“Oh?” she says, “Were you going to make a little bouquet, too?” she laughs.

You tilt your head at her, “Huh? No, we just picked too many. I’m sorry,” you add. The garden still looks fine, but you don’t want to take more than you needed.

“Too many for what?” she asks.

“For the recipe,” Asriel says, “It needed one buttercup for the crust and another in the filling.”

He face goes pale- or at least, paler than before.

“Gorey?” She calls across the room, the flower gripped tight in her hand, “How do you feel, dear?”

“I might have eaten a bit too much pie,” He laughs in the other room, “My tummy is feeling a little unhappy.”

Mom rushes out of the room faster than you’ve seen her move before, and she grabs the phone in the hall and speaks frantically to Dr. Pellas. You and Asriel shrink back into the kitchen anxiously, and you hug the broom to your chest. Her voice gets louder and louder and more and more afraid the louder she gets. You and Azzy keep shrinking into each other, uncertain what’s wrong.

Dr. Pellas gets there a little while later and she seems just as harried and rushes straight into the living room. The grownups talk in hushed voices and seem scared and upset and you and Azzy sit on the floor in the corner of the kitchen and hug each other and you try not to shake, scared, but you don’t know what of.

After awhile Mom comes back in the kitchen and sees you and bends down, holding the flower.

“I know the two of you meant well,” she says, “But buttercups are very dangerous. They’re poisonous, and we don’t use them in food.”

Your stomach drops through your body and into the floor and you cover your head with your arms and shrink inside yourself. This is all your fault. You did this.

She pulls the two of you into a hug, a big one, and then picks Asriel up.

“I think it’s time for bed,” she says, “Are you coming, Chara?”

“Just a sec,” you say, face buried in your pant leg. She hesitates, but then stands. You pull yourself shakily to your feet when she leaves the room and you grab the knife from the counter, discarded while you were cooking, and hide it in your waistband.

When you open the door to your bedroom she’s tucking Asriel in and you slip the knife under your pillow while you pull your pajamas on quickly. She tucks the blanket around you.

“Is dad going to be okay?” you ask, voice a hoarse whisper.

She pauses and then says, “Of course.” She’s lying.

She turns the light off and leaves, and you can hear Asriel crying quietly into his pillow.

“Hey,” you say, trying to sound brave, “What are you crying for? She said he’d be okay. Only babies cry about stuff like this.”

“I’m not a baby!” he sniffles.

“Yeah. So stop crying,” you say, and pull the knife from under your pillow. You run your fingers over the cold flat of the blade silently while Asriel starts slowly snuffing out his tears.

“Do you really think he’ll be okay?” Asriel asks.

“Mom wouldn’t lie,” you say, and hold the blade against your palm, but don't push it in. It’s sharp against your skin.

“I guess you’re right,” he says, and wipes his nose, “G’night, I guess, Chara.”

“Night,” you say, absently, slowly pressing the blade against the soft meat of your left palm. It starts to bleed but you hold it there, silent, digging as deeply as you can stand. Eventually you fall asleep.

When you wake up the room is still dark, but even by the nightlight you can tell there's a lot of blood. The clock says it’s 3:22am and you panic, and you put the knife inside your nightstand, still all bloody, and grab your bedspread. You check your sheets, but they look okay. It’s all over your pajamas though, and you drag your comforter to the bathroom and throw it and your pajamas in the washing machine. The inside of the lid tells you to use cold water for blood.

You grab a clean pair of pajamas from the dryer and take a shower, washing all the blood off your tummy. Your hand hurts and you bandage it up and put on the clean clothes and hope no one has noticed you’re awake.

When you creep back to your room you notice the door to Mom and Dad’s room is open, and they aren’t there. When you peek into the living room, Dad is asleep on the couch and Mom is sitting next to him on the floor, holding his hand, but she’s asleep too. Dad is tossing and turning, and he looks like he’s having a bad dream.

You hug your arms and run back to your room and curl up on the bed without a blanket. You hold your hurt hand to your chest and no tears come.

You wake up in the morning on your own even though it’s s school day. You peek out of the room and at the end of the hall you can see Mom and Dad and Dad’s still sick. You close the door and crawl into bed with Asriel. He hugs you and cries quietly and you put your head under the pillow and hide.

Eventually Mom comes in. “Daddy is sick, so you don’t have to go to school today,” she says, and she sounds exhausted, “Chara, you- where’s your blanket?” she asks. You panic.

“I wet the bed,” you lie, “I put it in the washing machine.”

She sighs, “That’s okay. I thought I heard the shower running last night. Come out, both of you, we all need to eat something. Daddy needs us to all take care of ourselves.”

You both follow her to the kitchen and Mom makes pancakes in silence. She goes back into the living room with dad and your stomach turns as you look at the food. Asriel eats his, and you just pretend to, pushing it around your plate until Asriel leaves and you throw it away. He goes to sit with Dad but you go back to your room and grab the knife. You take it to the bathroom and lock the door and wash it off in the sink.

You look at your face in the mirror. Ugly. Bad. You have gross flesh that doesn’t have monster fur on it and gross hair the colour of dead trees and pock marks and scars on your cheeks. Your nose is too big and your lips too small and your eyes always have nasty bags under them. Your face is so bony and your brown eyes unreadable. You put the tip of the knife against your cheek and think about cutting a big scar into it, but you chicken out and push your sleeve up instead.

You hide the knife under the sink when you’re done, behind some old towels, and clean everything up. You bandage up your arms and pull your sleeves back down. You’re a lot paler, but not snow-white like your brother. You’ll never look like him. You aren’t like him. You never were.

You wear long sleeves the next day and Dr. Pellas is back. Mom walks you very quickly to school, and she just keeps saying everything is okay even though you know it’s not. Asriel holds your hand tight.

You get to class early with your peers still milling about the room, reading books from the shelf or playing together in little groups. Suzy is sitting alone by the window and looking out at the sprawling subterranean city, but looking through it, looking past it. When she sees you she hops up to her feet and jogs over, tail wagging and something in you doesn’t want to talk to her, doesn’t want her to smile when she sees you, and when she gets up to you you push her, hard, and run out of the room as fast as you can. Asriel’s startled yelp of surprise quickly goes quiet behind you and you hide in a bathroom stall for what feels like all day, but can’t be very long because school is still going when you come out. You open the door to the classroom and your teacher scolds you for being late. Asriel’s eyes plead for an explanation but Suzy won’t look at you.

You spend most of the day ignoring your teacher and drawing in the margins of your paper. You draw ornate little crosses and wonder if Jesus is mad at you again. You wish he would punish you instead of your dad, but that’s probably why he’s not punishing you. God has always been mean like that. Just like the story of Job. He was a good man and he loved God more than anything, and when the Devil asked him to prove it, God destroyed him. He killed Job’s children and burned his livestock. He took everything from Job because his pride wouldn’t let him turn down a bet.

It never mattered if you were good or if you were bad. You were fucked either way.

Mom comes to get you after school and Asriel immediately blurts out that you pushed Suzy. She seems distracted, though, and she just tells you not to do that again. You walk home in silence, head down. You go to your room even though Asriel goes to sit next to Dad and tell him about school that day. You bury your head in your pillow, but you don’t cry. You just sit in the dark and hide.

Mom opens the door eventually.

“Chara?” she asks. You don’t say anything.”I know you’re upset about Daddy.” You wince and huddle tighter under the blankets, “He’s not mad at you, I promise.”

You’re silent. She sighs, then steps inside. You scoot away from her against the wall and she pauses. You hear a plate clink against the nightstand.

“I’m just going to leave you something to eat, okay? Please have a little dinner. I love you.”

She moves back toward the door. It closes. You wait another moment and then turn over.

Spaghetti.

You turn back over and face the wall.

That night, after everyone has gone to sleep, you go back to the bathroom and dig out the knife from behind the towels. When you’re done you go back and hide in bed again and shiver. You just feel unendingly cold and miserable. You don’t know how to make it stop. You wonder if it ever stops.

The next day Suzy looks like she wants to speak to you, but you scowl at her and she backs away, biting her lip and looking down through wet eyes. You don’t look at her, and you sit in your seat by the window and draw in the margins of your notebook paper. All the bad things in the world that ought to burn and great big monsters you’d like to be to destroy it. You draw lopsided buildings toppling under the massive feet of thousand-toothed monsters, the five headed beast of the sea.

When mom takes you home she seems a little better- and when you walk inside you’re shocked to see Dad is sitting up on the couch. He smiles wearily and waves at you behind his big mug of tea, and Asriel drops his bag and runs with a giddy cry of joy into his lap. You freeze like a deer in headlights and wish something would run you over. Is he okay?

Your hands shake like telephone pole wires in the wind, and you can hear the ting-ting of a flagpole somewhere in your heart. He opens a hand toward you and gestures for you to come sit with him. You feel something inside you- no, a hundred things inside you. Grief, happiness, relief, anger, everything you’ve felt and everything you’re feeling in little bubbles like at the bottom of a glass of soda and laughter titters out of you, until you run across the room, shoes still on and slam your face into his chest. You can’t stop laughing.

That night he sleeps in him and Mom’s room again. You’ve never felt so happy. It feels like everything is going to be okay again.

“I’m glad Daddy’s okay,” whispers Asriel, from his bed.

“Me, too,” you sigh. “Were you worried he would die?”

Asriel fidgets uncomfortably, “Were you?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah…” Asriel says, softly, trailing off. He picks back up, “Have you ever known anyone that died?”

You think back to your bloodstained hands and pastor bill and the next thing you know you’re holding your chest and gasping for air, choking on laughter. Mom’s there.

“Chara, Chara, my child, it’s okay, Mommy’s here, it’s okay,” she murmurs, over and over, hugging you to her chest. The world swims like water and you can’t stop laughing. Your hands are white knuckled around the fabric of your pajama’s chest front. Your ribs are on fire.

You weep into her shoulder through strangled guffaws while Asriel shivers in the corner until you finally pass out.

When you wake up, you feel better. You feel lighter. You feel happy again. Everything might be okay. You’re going to go to school today knowing Dad’s okay, and you’re going to be okay.

There is a knock at the door.

You hear Dr. Pellas’s voice like you’ve never heard it before when Mom opens the door.

“Have you seen her?!” Dr. Pellas asks, “Is she here?!”

“Is who here?” Mom asks gently, concerned. You feel your heart in your stomach, an ice cold stone.

“Suzy!!” Dr. Pellas cries, “She left a note on her bed and I can’t find her, and-”

Everything after that is noise. Searching with Asriel. With all the monsters. Checking places you played, hiding spots. School. Home. Dr. Pellas’s house. You aren’t the one that finds her.

You don’t know the woman that does. A clam-girl with triangle limbs like tiny obelisks. She went deeper into the caverns. She fell off a platform. She didn’t _fall_.

You don’t listen to the noise. It’s all just noise noise noise and you clamp your hands over your ears and tune it out. You know this story. You know this song.

This was your fault. You don’t listen to Toriel tell you about how Suzy’s father had Fallen Down last year and how she hadn’t taken it well. You don’t listen to the stories of all the other things that are definitely the reason this happened because you know the truth. And you know everyone else knows the truth, too, and they’re trying to spare your feelings by lying to you. You aren’t stupid.

This is your fault. This is your fault.

You stay home and hide in bed. Mom leaves a plate of butterscotch-cinnamon pie on your nightstand and you ignore it, letting the sweet scent rest on your tongue while your tummy screams and begs you to eat something. You suffer. You deserve to suffer. The world is angry. The world is bitter. You don’t belong here.

The next day Asriel goes to school with Asgore, but Toriel doesn’t make you get up. You stay in bed and listen to your belly rumble. You don’t say anything to Asriel when he asks if you’re okay. You don’t say anything to anyone.

On the third day Toriel opens the door to your room after Asriel’s left for school and turns on the light. You bury your face in your pillow.

“My child, I must run by the Royal Laboratory today to take care of some things. It will only be for a little while, but I’d like you to come with me.”

Her words are soft in the light filtering through the fabric of your comforter like little yellow stars. You knead your fists against the sweat stained sheets.

“Okay,” you say, finally, and wait until she closes the door to get out of bed. You wear a brown shirt and long pants and try to hide in a jacket, sven though it's warm today. You keep your eyes on the floor and go and stand in foyer until she comes out of her room. You’re surprised to notice she’s wearing her royal dressing garb- she doesn’t dress up all official very often. Toriel prefers to stay home with you and Asriel- or at least, she does when you’re not at school. You realize you don’t know what she does while you’re in class, and you feel cold guilt puncture your heart like ice. You should have asked.

She holds your hand and you keep your eyes cast down as she leads you a way you’ve never been before, winding down the big street with grey-purple cobbled stones and winding back streets that branch off of it like spiderwebs into the residential backstreets. There’s people you’ve never met milling about, and they all bow as you pass. You try to keep your eyes down. Toriel doesn’t say anything.

At the end of the street is a big square building, all right angles without the turreted pillars featured on the more contemporary architecture. It looks utilitarian and scary, and you don’t want to go inside, but you also don’t want to abandon your long held silence, so you just squeeze Toriel’s hand as she steps past the threshhold with you.

It’s not as scary inside. There’s a desk and a lady behind it, and she looks up when you enter and smiles.

“Queen Toriel!” she says, “We’ve been expecting you- and is this little Chara?” The lady looks at you like she anticipates a reaction, but you stubbornly bite your lip and stare at the offset gold and lilac tiles on the floor.

“Chara isn’t feeling well today,” Toriel says, “They’re just staying with me until I can take them back home.”

“Oh, poor thing,” the woman says. You can hear the sickly sweet pity in her voice and you resent it, “Doctor Gaster is in Lab Five right now.”

“Thank you, Cheryl,” says Toriel.  She leads you toward a heavy steel door that opens when she gets close, and into a brightly lit white room.

There’s a bunch of people you don’t know inside, and they’re all wearing lab coats. A man with a gooey white face, cracked like porcelain casts his glittering eyes towards her and something about his gaze makes you uncomfortable. He doesn’t look at you.

“Welcome, Queen Toriel. I’ve been anticipating you,” he glides over to shake her hand, and she lets yours go. You feel a momentary panic and stuff it down into your stomach, clenching your hand into a tiny fist at your side. “We’ve made some exciting progress with the machine that I thought you would like to see.”

“You are correct,” she says. She sounds pleasant, “Did you find a way to circumvent the destabilization during the defragmentation process?”

“Not quite yet,” he oozes, “But we may not need to. We’ve found evidence of the potential for duplication and synthesis.”

“Really?” she says. She sounds surprised. You wonder what they’re talking about.

“Yes- we were wondering if you might allow us to take a sample from your adopted child, actually. I’m very pleased to see that you’ve brought them.” You tense up and look at her. Her eyes widen and her mouth thins.

“...Unfortunately, I do not believe that will be possible,” she says, after a moment, “Perhaps when you’ve done more research into the matter, Dr. Gaster.”

“Very well,” Dr. Gaster says with a cool shrug, “At least allow Dr. Roskins to show you his theory and the evidence we’ve compiled.”

“Yes, I’d like to see that, yes,” she says, and she sounds a little shaky, for some reason.

“As you may imagine,” he continues, “children are not permitted in the lab. If would be alright, I can wait with your child while Dr. Roskins escorts you through the lab.” Toriel looks hesitant, “I would like them to answer a few of my questions that may prove beneficial to my research. I promise,” says Dr. Gaster, “Not to touch a hair on their head.”

You look up at her and silently beg her not to leave you here with this man, but after a moment, she pats your head gently, “I’ll only be a moment, dear. Dr. Gaster is a very nice man.”

She leaves you.

There’s a beat of silence after the door closes behind her, and Dr. Gaster gives you an uncomfortable crooked smile.

“Hello, human,” he says, “How are you enjoying our world of monsters?”

You don’t say anything.

“That’s fine,” he says, “You don’t need to speak. I wonder, perhaps, if you know why we live underground.”

You avert your eyes to the floor and cross your arms behind your back, scratching your wrist, picking at the red-brown scabs.

“Humans did this to us,” he whispers, “They locked us beneath the earth that bore us, to rot, like corpses.” He steps closer. You don’t like him, “To break the barrier, we need to present it with an equal or greater power than that which created it. Chara, may I ask you a question?”

You feel suffocated. You don’t want to speak to him anymore. You wish Mom would come back.

“Do you care about monsters?”

Your breath catches in your throat. You think of every kindness a monster has shown you. Mom’s pie, Dad’s gentle paws, playing games with Asriel, your teacher’s patience, Suzy- Suzy.

“Yes,” you say hoarsely, “Very much.”

“You have the power to save us,” he whispers, “It lies within you.”

“Tell me how,” you say, stepping toward him, a black, blubbering mass of tar and smoke.

“Through the far cavern, past the magma fields, lies the weakest point of the barrier. To break it, seven human souls are needed.”

“But I only have one soul,” you speak, a breath within your body.

“You can get more.”

“How?”

“When a monster dies,” he says, “Their soul vanishes. When a human perishes, it does not. A monster is capable of absorbing a human soul. A body containing the soul of a monster and a human would be just powerful enough to pass through the barrier alone.”

“If a monster… if a monster absorbed a human soul…”

“They could pass through the barrier, and retrieve six more. And free us all.”

“So the human would have to…”

The door opens. You straighten up and look at your mother. Dr. Gaster just keeps smiling.

“Welcome back, My Liege. Were the results impressive?”

“They were,” she says. She seems impressed, “Chara, dear, did you have a good talk with Dr. Gaster?”

You pause, and look at him. Tiny glowing eyes like gentle orange coals, “Yeah,” you say, “He just asked me some stuff about humans.”

She looks irrevocably relieved, “I’m glad,” she says, and takes your hand again. You squeeze her hand and feel the soft fur between your fingers. She’s been so kind to you. You love her.

“I hate to discuss finances, but-”

“Yes, your new budget is approved. Please continue with your work, Dr. Gaster.”

“Thank you, my liege,” he oozes. Toriel leads you back to the door out, and Dr. Gaster waves at you with one white hand, a perfectly symmetrical hole in the center.

You count the cobbled stones beneath your shoes in silence on the way home. When Mom goes to the kitchen to work on dinner, you go to the bathroom and take out the knife you’d hidden there. You stare at it for a long time.

You imagine cutting your arms open and filling up the bathtub with blood. You wonder if it would stay warm, or if it would take so long it would get cold. You can only imagine this scene for a moment, though, because in your imagination, Mom opens the bathroom door and finds you. You snap back into yourself and your hands quiver at the look on her face in your mind. She would be devastated. She would think it was her fault. Her and Dad love you. They would be so upset.

You sit on the floor and run your thumb along the cool flat of the knife, and try to imagine your funeral. Who would come?Your teacher? Your classmates? Mom would be hysterical. Asriel would be so upset. Would Dr. Pellas be there, or would she still blame you? You think about how she sobbed when she heard about Suzy, clinging to Mom like she might fall apart at any moment. You don’t want your mom to ever feel like that. You don’t ever want her to feel like it was her fault, or that she could have done something. This was probably inevitable.

You sigh, and rehide the knife under the cabinet, your arms clean. This won’t work anymore. You need a better way.

You go back outside into the hallway and then into the living room, where Mom is doing some paperwork at the table.

“Mom?” you ask. She looks up, startled, as if she hadn’t anticipated you coming out again, “Can I have some lunch?”

She looks ready to cry as she scrambles up out of her seat, “Of course, Chara, dear! What would you like? Anything you want.”

“Snail soup,” you say. She loves snail soup. You like snails, too, because they make you think of her, humming in the kitchen over her favourite food. You pull some paper out of the cupboard by the kitchen table and draw in crayon while Mom makes soup in the kitchen. You draw your family, you, and Asriel, and Mom, and Dad- circle bodies with oval limbs and twig fingers and big crayon smiles, and then you pause, and then you keep going. You draw Suzy, and Dr. Pellas, and Ms. Snowdrake, and some other kids in your class, and even Dr. Gaster. You squeeze in as many people as you can, neighbors, people you’ve seen in the store, until you run out of space on the page and you flip it over to keep going.

When Mom comes back in she smiles at your drawing and says it’s beautiful.

“Do you want to hang it up on the fridge?” she asks. You think about it.

“Yes, please,” you say, and hand it to her. She trades you for the bowl of soup, warm and delicious. You scarf it down while she tacks your drawing up onto the fridge in the kitchen.

“I wanna go back to school tomorrow,” you say, when she comes back in, and she softens so much it makes your heart seize up and your ribs ache.

“I’m glad,” Mom says. She comes over. She smooths out your hair in a maternal way and kisses the top of your head. You keep eating your soup.

Maybe if you fell off a bridge, it might look like an accident? Then they wouldn’t have to feel like it was their fault, or they did something wrong. But what if they couldn’t find your soul after you fell? Maybe you could drown “accidentally” in the bathtub. That sounds like it would be really hard, because if someone noticed you before you were dead they would save you, and then if you tried again it would be really suspicious. You don’t want Mom or Dad to know.

But, Asriel… You trust Asriel. He’s your best friend in the whole world. He’s nice to you, and he believes in you. Asriel is your brother. You can tell him anything.

You can tell him the truth.

You spoon more snail soup into your mouth, the taste of warm and home and safety. Mom settles in at the table to keep working on her paperwork. Asriel is nervous and shy and anxious sometimes, but if he takes your soul and passes through the barrier, he can save everyone. You think that would really help his self esteem. He wouldn't ever have to be nervous or shy again if he saved monsterkind from the Underground- and you can die knowing that he’ll take your soul and not just whoever finds it. Maybe they wouldn’t even know what to do with it. That would be a waste. It has to be Asriel.

You put your bowl and spoon in the sink when you’re done and go back to your room and lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, arms folded under your head. Maybe if you got him to drop something heavy on your head. Maybe if you tripped into the fireplace.

You hear the sound of the front door opening, the clatter of motion and greetings. You don’t move, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. You’ll tell him when he comes in; but when the door opens, it’s Dad.

“Howdy, Chara!” he says, cheerfully. His voice is still raspy, somehow. “Mom said you were feeling a little better, today.”

“A little better,” you echo, and smile reassuringly. It feels hollow, but Dad brightens.

“I’m so glad to hear it! Say, would you like to help me and Asriel in the garden today? I haven’t had a chance to weed it since I’ve been sick, and I could use a few extra hands.”

Asriel is helping. You won’t be able to talk to him until he’s done, anyway. “Sure,” you say, and slide your feet off the side of the bed. You slip your shoes back on and hold Dad’s hand, and he leads you out into the garden, where Asriel has his camcorder, and he’s taking videos of all the flowers. He turns toward you and waves, camera pointed toward you. You smile and wave back, and so does Dad.

You pluck dandelions from between the yellow buttercups and it doesn’t hit you like a sack of bricks, but like an ice cold wave.

The buttercups.

You sit close to Dad and lean against his fluffy side while you pick the weeds out and leave only the desirable flowers behind, no matter how much the weeds wanted to grow.

Asriel sits back on the sidewalk beside the glowing ambience of a lit torch and changes the tape in his recorder.

“Hey, Chara!” Asriel says. You look up and wipe sweat off your brow with your forearm. “I wanna film your creepy face!”

“Okay,” you say. Asriel raises the camera and you look as innocent as you can.

“Okay, Chara, are you ready?” Asriel asks from behind the camcorder. You nod. “Do your creepy face!” You make a face like one of the demons in the paintings in Pastor Bill’s church, nose crinkled and teeth bared, tongue out. If only they could see you now. Indulging in the most evil of mortal sins. You wonder if Jesus is watching you now, but you don’t care if he is. He’s a god for humans, and you’ve picked a new side. You don’t need human gods or human morals anymore. Your stomach twists in a pretzel and you turn back towards the dirt, scowling, while Asriel laughs away his overdramatic cry of fright.

“Oh! Wait! I had the lens cap on…” Asriel says, looking disappointed. You frown tersely, frustrated.

“Well, that’s too bad. I’m not doing it twice.”

“What!? You're not gonna do it again...?” Asriel pouts, before regaining his good spirit and crawling over to give you a good natured shove? “Come on, quit tricking me!” He laughs.

“Come along, children,” says Dad, “I bet it’s almost time for dinner. We need to wash up!” He stands up, a great, towering mass of fur and claws and horns. You feel small and stand, wiping your dirt stained hands on your trouser thighs.

“Okay, Daddy!” says Asriel, skipping past you to the house. You follow him in beside Dad, trying to memorize this moment. It’s a good one. Nice. Soft, somehow. Will you ever have any more of these?

You wash your hands, and change your clothes to clean ones. Mom makes some kind of shepherd’s pie. Asriel tells you about something funny that happened at school that day. Dad compliments the food. Mom gives you an extra generous helping. You do your best to finish it.

You go to your room while Asriel helps Mom with the dishes. You crawl in bed and lie on top of the covers and think about that soft moment, weeding the garden with Dad and Asriel. Your family loves you. Your family cares about you. You’re really a part of the family. A real mom. A real dad. A real brother. You wonder how much they’ll miss you. Your stomach twists up, cold and hard.

The door opens suddenly and Asriel jumps in, holding his camera and shouting.

“Howdy, Chara! Smile for the camera!” You look up and smile weakly, trying to disguise the cold dread in the pit of your gut with a warm expression. Asriel grins mischievously.  “Ha, this time I got YOU! I left the cap on... ON PURPOSE! Now you're smiling for noooo reason!”

He giggles and your smile falls. You look down at your lap. Six souls. Broken barrier. Freedom for everyone. Justice for monsters. You can save everyone. You can save everyone. Only you can save everyone.

“Hey,” you whisper, hoarsely, “Remember last month, when Dad got sick?

“What?” He scrunches up his face, like its a weird question. “Oh, yeah, I remember. When we tried to make butterscotch pie for Dad, right? The recipe asked for cups of butter... But we accidentally put in buttercups instead.”

“They were poisonous.”

“Yeah! Those flowers got him really sick. I felt so bad. We made Mom really upset. I should have laughed it off, like you did…” There’s an uncomfortable pause where you knead your hands against themselves in your lap, hairs raised on the back of your neck, “Um, anyway, where are you going with this?”

You look away, and then back to him, “Turn off the camera. I need to tell you something.”

“Huh? Turn off the camera...? OK.” He tilts it forward and turns it off, dropping it to his side. He trots forward and sits next to you on the bed, “What’s wrong?”

“I went with Mom somewhere today, and I met a scientist guy.”

“Uh huh?”

“And he told me about the barrier.”

“We learned about the barrier in school, though. Ms. Snowdrake told the story for you.”

“Yeah, I know. Dr. Gaster told me some stuff she didn’t.”

“Dr. Gaster? He’s the head royal scientist- he works for Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah. He told me… that if you have a monster and a human soul, you can pass through the barrier.”

Asriel’s ears perk up, “Like you and me?”

“Yeah. Like you and me,” you say softly. “Only it has to be in one body.”

Asriel frowns, “But how would we get into a new body?”

“I think we just need to get my soul in your body,” you say, “He told me that a human’s soul remains after they die. So you could take it, and pass through the barrier, and get six more souls and then break the barrier, forever. For everyone.”

As you speak, Asriel pales more than usual beneath his fur. His ears flatten against his head and his shoulders hitch, “Chara, you would- but ou would- you would have to-”

“Die.”

“Die?” he echoes. His voice sounds hoarse, barely above a whisper, like he’s afraid to give the worst substance, “But I don’t want you to die.”

“But everyone will be free!” You say, and grab his paws tightly in your hands, squeezing them emphatically, “It’s not fair that monsters have to live Underground. It’s wrong. Don’t you want to be free, Asriel?”

“I- I do, but-” His eyes are wet. He looks confused. He doesn’t understand. He has to understand, surely. This is the right thing to do.

“Everybody dies, Azzy, eventually,” you say, and smile at him. He looks uncomfortable, ducking his shoulders and looking up at you, “Mom and Dad are gonna die, and you’re gonna die, and I’m gonna die. One day. But if we do this now, together, then no one else has to die without seeing the sunshine.”

“Sunshine…?” He echoes, sniffling.

“The sun is so beautiful, Azzy. It’s warm on your skin and so bright it hurts to look at. You can lie in the grass and feel it on your face and sleep in the breeze. There’s big mountains that are so huge you can’t see where the end no matter how hard you look, and the flowers on the surface bloom everywhere- there’s rivers and streams and trees and roads and sunsets, Azzy, if you’ve never seen a sunset, it’s-” You stop and catch your breath, and realize your panting, “I want you to see a sunset.”

“I… I wanna see a sunset. I wanna see a sunset with you, though.”

“I will be with you, though, sort of. You’ll be carrying my soul.”

“But you’ll be gone.”

“But everyone will be free. It’ll be just me. No one else has to die like Suzy,” you breathe the words, voice cracking over her name, “No one else falls down, hopeless.”

“Suzy…” he says, sniffling. His eyes harden and he wipes his nose, “I… I do want that. I do. I just… I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’ll be sad, but, you’ll get over it. You haven’t even known me that long,” you say, and it stings. He looks alarmed. “Trust me. You trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do…” he says, immediately. You let his hands go.

“We’ll save everyone, Asriel. This will be my legacy.”

“Legacy…” He repeats, then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, “Okay. Okay. We’ll save everyone. Together. I trust you, Chara.”

“Together,” you say, and there’s a beat, before you speak again, “We’ll use the flowers.”

“The buttercups,” Asriel confirms, “They’ll make you sick.”

“And then Mom and Dad won’t know. They won’t have to think they did something wrong.”

“Yeah,” says Asriel, “That makes sense. It’ll be a secret.”

“I need you to promise that after I die, you’ll take my soul and do whatever you have to do break the barrier, okay? Otherwise it’s all for nothing.”

Asriel looks very serious now, his face intense. He grabs your hands this time and squeezes, his claws digging into the backs of your hands, “I promise,” he says.

That night Asriel sneaks into the garden after Mom and Dad have gone to bed. He brings you a handful of buttercups that you take in your trembling fingers. This is it. This is the moment.

You shove them in your mouth and chew.

Asriel winces as you gag on the bitter flavour, but you get them down.

“Do you think that was enough?” you ask.

By midnight you’re sweating, and by morning you’re puking. Mom comes to check on you when she hears you retching, and she runs to the bathroom and brings back a bucket, scooping you up like baby and rocking you back and forth, even though you’re all gross. She holds you to her chest as you gasp for air through sticky vomit and spit and she opens the door to her room and calls for Dad.

“Asgore, Chara’s sick- will you clean their sheets up?” Dad mumbles something and rises from bed, but you’re too distracted by the pain in your tummy to pay attention. You cling to her dress as another wave of nausea washes over you and you gesture for the bucket hanging by her side. She quickly hands it to you and you wrap yourself around it, emptying your guts out.

“Chara?” Asriel asks from the doorway. His eyes look panicked, frenzied. He’s going to tell. You shoot him a look and he shrinks back, and Mom carries you back into your bedroom.

“Shh, dear, Chara will be alright. They’re just sick is all.” Dad comes in the room and Mom rocks you as he strips your vomit soaked sheets from the mattress. She sits down on the far end, the dry part, when he leaves.

“Is there anything I can do?” Asriel asks.

“You can go back to sleep, honey,” says Mom, gently. Asriel looks upset.

“Mom-” You wheeze, “Can you get me some water?”

“Of course, my dear child. I’ll be right back.” She sets you down in your wobbly feet and you sit on the mattress and wait until she leaves before you shoot a look at Asriel.

“You better not tell,” you hiss.

“I... I don't like this idea, Chara,” his eyes are misting, he’s chewing on his lower lip and he looks like he’s definitely going to tell.

“Come on- you promised. You’re not gonna back out on a promise, are you?”

“Wh.. what? N-no, I'm not…”

“You’re a big kid, Azzy. We’re big kids. Only babies cry. You’re tougher than this, aren’t you?” you demand, weakly.

“...Big kids don't cry. Yeah, you're right.”

“I know we’re doing the right thing. You don’t doubt me, do you?”

“No! I'd never doubt you, Chara. Never!” He cries it almost a little too loudly. You can hear mom’s footsteps in the hall.

“You’ve gotta be strong, Azzy. We’ve gotta be strong. You can do this,” you whisper.

“Y... yeah! We'll be strong! We'll free everyone. I'll go get the flowers,” he says, with a renewed sense of bravery. His hands shake as he clenches them into fists and slips out of the room.

Mom comes back in with some water. It quells the burning in your throat a little bit, but not enough. Dad comes back with clean sheets.

“Do you want to sleep with us, tonight?” He rumbles, his voice like the sound of a trembling earthquake through a mountain. You shake your head.

“No. My bed is fine.”

Mom pets your hair back and rocks you like a baby, slow and gentle. Asriel slips back in the room, unnoticed. She doesn’t seem like she wants to let you go, but after a little while of you not vomitting, she tucks you back in and puts a fresh bucket beside you. You curl around it as if it could tether you to the world, a lifeline in a sinking sea.

“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in our bed?” Mom asks.

“I’m sure,” you mumble, sick and sleepy. She kisses your forehead. She shuts the door. Asriel creeps out of bed and hands you a fistful of flowers.

“Thanks, Azzy,” you murmur, and shove them in your mouth.

You wake up at some point to a light under the door and sweat coating your skin like you’ve been running in the rain. The sheets stick to your flesh like a peel and you struggle to turn onto your side and fill your screaming lungs with cool air through your burned out through. You make a weak sound and try to clear it of mucus so you can call for Mom, but then you hear her voice. It sounds like she’s arguing on the phone. She hangs up with an angry cry and you huddle under the blanket.

Your door opens.

“Chara, dear, we’re going to see Dr. Pellas, okay?”

“I don’t want to see Dr. Pellas,” you whimper into your pillow.

“I know, sweetie,” she says, as she pulls some clean clothes out of the dresser, “But you’re even sicker today than you were yesterday. You need to see a doctor.”

“She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Mom mumbles, but she’s lying.

“She knows it’s my fault.”

Mom winces, but pulls a pair of shorts out and adds it to the pile before coming to your bed and gently peeling back the covers.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she lies, and helps you struggle out of your wet clothes and into the fresh ones. It’s not until you’re putting your socks on that you remember the cuts on your arms, the fresh ones you’ve made since you got here. Did she see them? If so, she makes no indication of it.

She picks you up and carries you like a doll out of the house, down the street and to Suzy’s house. Dr. Pellas’s house.

She rings the doorbell several times before the door opens and Dr. Pellas answers, her bobblehead lizard eyes set deep in her head, her clothes disheveled. She looks tired, and she looks angry. There’s a long moment where neither your Mom nor Dr. Pellas say anything, and you struggle to keep your eyes open as you peek over your mother’s arm as she holds you.

“Go home,” Dr. Pellas says finally, her fine hoarse. Mom explodes.

“My child is sick, and you are going to look at them!” she yells, and you shrink into yourself, and wish you were back home in bed.

“That _thing_ is not your _child_ , Toriel!” Dr. Pellas hisses, and your breath catches cold in your throat, ice on the desert, “It’s a human being that fell down here, and you should have left it where it landed.”

“How can you say that?! How can you stand here and look at a dying child and say something so horrible?!” Mom cries, and you can hear barely restrained fury in her voice.

“You know exactly why,” Dr. Pellas snarls back, her rows of needle-teeth bared, “That this is as evil as the rest of its kind. You know exactly what you did,” she says, suddenly darting her eyes toward ou. They’re filled with a kind of disdain you haven’t seen since you last saw Mrs. Gracie. Mom tightens her grip on you and pulls you back away from the doctor.

“I’m sorry about what happened to Suzy, Pellas, it was a terrible thing, but it was _not_ Chara’s fault, and if you don’t help them, they are going to die. We don’t need two dead children. This isn’t you!”

Dr. Pellas laughs, and it’s not a nice laugh. You shut your eyes and shove your face into your mother’s chest.

“Sure, tell yourself that if you have to.”

“I’ve stood beside you through everything, Pellas,” Mom whispers, strangled, “Even the affair, even after what happened to Dyno-”

Dr. Pellas snaps back and cuts her off, “Keep his name out of your mouth. And keep that little bastard off my porch.”

“I am- ordering you, as your Queen, to perform your sacred duty as royal doctor, and help this child.”

After a moment, Dr. Pellas laughs. It peels out and gets louder, and then you open your eyes in surprise as Mom’s arms open some, and Dr. Pellas turns you over, looking close. You look at her eyes and see that familiar, ice cold hatred that makes you shake and your mouth dry up. She touches your forehead, and frowns, before opening your mouth and looking inside. You see something new in her eyes- a flash of recognition.

A smile spreads across her lizard face, wide and sharp and she laughs so hard she starts coughing, before she leans back against the frame of her front door.

“What?” Mom asks desperately, “What is it?!”

“I quit,” Pellas laughs, and slams the door.

Mom keeps telling you over and over again on the way home that everything is okay, that it’s okay, that Dr. Pellas is just upset right now and saying things she doesn’t mean, that you shouldn’t take anything she says to heart, that you’re a good child and you’re going to be okay. You wish you had the energy to do anything but wheeze, but you don’t. She tucks you back into bed and goes into a frenzy on the phone, making calls. You laugh while you weep into your pillow.

Humans are evil. You have always known that- and you’re just as evil as the rest of them, born of mortal sin and raised in it, drenched in it. Every cell of your wretched being is caked in sin and it always will be. The only thing that can cleanse sin is blood. Jesus died on the cross to cleanse humanity of original sin, but humans? Humans are too great an evil for even the blood of God’s only son to wash away. Your blood will cleanse no one, purify nothing, but it will offer salvation. It’s too late for you to keep your evil from infecting Suzy, but it’s not too late for Dr. Pellas to find freedom and sunlight.

For the first time in your life, your life has value. It’s just that your life doesn’t have value to you.

It’s so funny, the whole thing is so fucking ridiculous, all you can do is wheeze desperate, pitiful laughter into your pillow while Mom screams on the phone outside.

Asriel sneaks you in another handful of flowers after he comes home from school while Mom and Dad are talking in the living room. They taste foul on your tongue and no matter how much water you drink your mouth never feels wet. It stays hot and dry and burning and your eyes sting with tears at the tight feeling in your belly from too much water. Your throat continues to burn and you need another glass to cool your throat but you simply can’t swallow anymore- you shove your hand down your throat like Mrs. Gracie used to make you do when you’d been bad and puke into your bucket.

It’s startling to see the swirls of semi-transparent yellow and ruby red circling the bucket, but you don’t have enough in you to think about it before you chug another glass of water. As soon as it’s empty your throat is burning again and you cry out for your mother.

She’s there in a heartbeat with soothing words, and she takes your empty glass to refill in the sink and your bucket to empty. By the time she comes back you’re coughing like the devil’s in you (and he very well may be), bent over double against yourself, hands gripping the folds of your stomach as you wheeze desperately. When you finally regain your breath Mom looks horrified, her hands shaking so bad the water is spilling. You look blearily at your pillow where you’d smashed your face while you were coughing, and it’s bright red.

Something about it is funny. Maybe the colour; how it’s the same red you imagine Lucifer’s burnt flesh is, or maybe it’s the fact this is the first time it’s really hit you that you’re going to die. You can’t stop laughing, even when mom drops the water on the floor and crushes you against her chest, chin smeared pink-red even as you smear it onto her frock. You can’t stop laughing. You can’t stop laughing.

Asriel brings you a sandwich when he comes home and you can taste the flowers hidden within the generous layers of cheese and ham, a secret surprise for you. You eat it in front of your mother, and she has no idea. No idea. That’s so funny. It’s all so funny.

You don’t think this will take much longer.

You wonder what it will be like to die. Will you see a bright light? Will Jesus be there, or St. Peter? Will he turn you away at the gates for the things you’ve done and your blood born sin? Will the mother you’ve never met come and collect you and lead you by the hand to Hell? You don’t know what she looks like, what she sounds like… will she know you?

Will she want you? You don’t even know her name. All you know is what Mrs. Gracie told you- that your mother was a no-good crackwhore prostitute who got killed and went to hell. You don’t even know how she died. Did she get shot? Did she do something bad? Did she ever love you? Did she ever want you?

Tears bubble up in your eyes and you mash your face into your pillow, teeth grit. You try to remember as far back as you can, try to pull memories of her from your mind like you’re stripping bark from a tree with your teeth. You can’t see her. You try to make her up, imagine her blonde like all the magazines, with some hair and dark eyes like yours, but between that, its darkness. It all feels fake. It feels hollow. Were you ever wanted?

That evening Mom finally takes a break and dad joins you, clinging to your hand like you might float away if he lets go. Mom files down her claws to soft nubs, but Dad’s are needles that he’s careful to keep away from your soft palms.

He won’t stop crying. That explains why Asriel is such a crybaby. It’s genetic, just like his teeth and claws and inherently good nature. You hate how upset he is. You hate how upset everyone is.

Watching Mama shake and shudder and Dad cries and Asriel sobs and you babble blood through bitter bites of buttercups while you waste away is waning your determination. For a moment, just a moment, you don’t think it’s worth it anymore.

“Chara... Can you hear me? We want you to wake up…” Mama whispers, brushing wet bangs out of your eyes. You struggle to open your eyes, exhausted.

“Charan! You have to stay determined! You can't give up! You are the future of humans and monsters…” Dad implores. He sounds desperate in a new and real way. You hate it. You hate it. You are the future of humans and monsters.

If you give up now, the future for humans is bright. They stay happy on the surface. You live. You live with your family who loves you.

But if you stay determined… monsters go free. And humanity suffers as much as they let you suffer.

It’s your last chance to change your mind.

Darkness takes you again.

“... Psst... Chara... Please... Wake up…” You blink and move your head, working your mouth open. It’s sticky and you can smell your own foul, dry breath and you wrinkle your nose unhappily.

“Azzy,” you croak miserably. His eyes are red and puffy beneath the thin fur around his eyelids, soft and sad. You’ve never seen the crybaby so upset. You hate that it’s your fault, “What’s wrong?”

“I don't like this plan anymore. I... I…” He struggles for breath, taking in short little gasps between words like he might lose them if he doesn’t get them out quickly enough.

If you give up now, you have to tell Mom and Dad the truth. Everyone will know what Asriel did, what he helped you do. He has to live it down. Maybe you don’t get better anyway. Maybe it’s too late.

If you stay determined, he’s a hero. He doesn’t live it down, he lives up to it. If you stay determined you make your brother the hero of monsters that takes your revenge AND saves the people who saved you. You get everything you ever wanted.

All you have to do is die. You die and you get your happy ending. Everyone does.

“You said,” you say, weakly, trying to smile, “you don’t doubt me now, huh? After we’ve come so far?” You laugh, and it comes out as just air and pain in your chest, “You’re not gonna tell me that all the suffering so far was for nothing, huh?”

“.. no, I said... I said I'd never doubt you,” he looks down at his hands uncomfortably, and wipes his nose on his sleeve. You reach over and take one of his paws and squeeze it as tightly as your weak little hands can.

“It’s okay,” you say, “We’ll be heroes, when you’re done. It will be worth it.”

His hand twitches in yours, and a moment later his grip around your calloused fingers tightens and he nods, sniffling.

“Six, right? We just have to get six... And we'll do it together, right?”

“Together,” you repeat, “always.”

He brings you just two buttercups and you struggle to get them down. Your jaw feels weak and your tummy turns in knots as you chew the bitter petals limply and swallow half mush, too tired to finish.

At some point, you notice Dad wiping your forehead with a cool rag, and it feels like Heaven against your skin. You think Heaven would be nice to go to if it felt like the moment a damp cloth touched your feverish face forever- but you aren’t sure you get to go there. You mostly hope you just go nowhere.

“Chara,” he blubbers, “You have to stay determined…”

There’s a lump in your throat, a pit in your stomach. You have to stay determined. You have to show your Daddy the sun again. you have to show him the grass and trees and the world he was thrown out of. You want to bring him home.

“Asriel,” you wheeze, “the flowers…”

“The flowers?” He asks, and your vision snaps back in focus, started by your own slip. Asriel jolts behind him, alarmed, eyes wide.

“In my village, at home, in my backyard,” you amend quickly, “the flowers I grew… I miss them.”

“Oh,” he says, sadly, “What kind of flowers were they? We’ll bring you some.”

You struggle with your thoughts and think of yellow, of the buttercups outside that both brought you to this suffering and with deliver you from it, and shake the thoughts away again. The flowers. The flowers at home. In the church garden.

“Golden flowers,” you whisper, “they’re gold… I don’t know what they’re called. Mrs. Gracie just calls them weeds…”

“We’ll bring you some,” he promises, earnestly, patting your hands. His paws are rough, like sandpaper stretched over couch foam. Warm, though.

Asriel brings you another flower while dad gets you a glass of water.

“I got this today,” he says, pushing something into your hand, “I passed this store on my walk home from school and I- I wanted it. This part is for you.”

You chew dazedly on the flower and knead your hand on whatever he’s given you. What is it? You hold it close to your face and blink, eyes clearing blurrily. Gold. Heart.

“A necklace…?” You ask, confused.

“A locket,” he says, “I have one too, they both say “best friends forever.””

“Best friends… forever…” you repeat, “do you think so?”

The door opens, and you see dad pause in the doorway. You swallow.

“Do I think what?” Asriel asks.

“That we’ll be friends… forever…?”

“Of course I do!” He says, his voice cracking. Crybaby.

“Even when I’m dead?” You ask, “Will you still love me? Will I still matter when I’m gone?”

“Of course I’ll still love you, Chara!” He cries, tightening his grip on your hand. It doesn’t even feel warm anymore. “I’m your brother… You’ll always matter to me, no matter what.”

“...Promise…?” You murmur.

“I promise, Chara. I promise, I promise, I promise!”

“Chara? Are you alright?” Dad says, far away.

“...You… Promise…?” You ask again. “...Promise…?”

Darkness takes you.

And then… light. Warm, yellow light. You expected the gates of heaven, or the pits of Hell, but instead, you see-

Yourself.

You’re smaller than you would have thought, somehow. Small, and sweaty, and still. You’re lying in bed, half wrapped in the covers, with scabs all around your mouth, crusted blood around your cracked lips. Half lidded, leaking eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, obscured by sweat slicked hair. You aren’t breathing.

You’re dead.

It hits you like a hammer and you stumble back and away, into the nightstand, knocking over the picture of your family. It hits the ground and you hear the glass shatter. You can feel your hands shaking.

“Asriel?” It’s Dad’s shaking voice and you turn toward it. He’s staring at you with wide, terrified eyes. Can he see you? Are you not a ghost? You hit the table…

You look at your hands.

Soft pink pads and thin white fur, with nubby little claws at the ends of your fingers- bright green sleeves and- and- you grab your head, feeling the huge curling horns there that curve backwards like a ram’s and you start to shake. You aren’t you. You aren’t you.

“Asriel, what did you do?” Dad whispers. You don’t look at him. You can’t look at him. You look at your tiny broken body in bed. It’s awful. You can’t leave it here. It’s not right. It’s all wrong.

You cover your face with your paws and shake your head. Wrong wrong wrong- you aren’t supposed to still be here, you aren’t supposed to be alive- if you’re here, where is Asriel? What happened to him? What have you done?

Your hands move without you telling them to and touch the necklace you hadn’t noticed around your chest- one just like the one in your body’s hand. Best friends forever.

He’s right here. You’re together.

You start giggling giddily. You’re still alive! You didn’t go anywhere! Not only are you still alive, but you’ve discarded your human vessel like an ugly jacket, something for the garbage- you’re in a monster body now, and that makes you a monster! Fuck heaven, fuck Hell, fuck Jesus and God and Satan and the Angels and he five headed beast and the whote of Babylon and all the rest! You opted out of humanity!

You’re laughing, nearly hysterical, and you grab your disgusting human vessel. It doesn’t belong here. You’re going to toss it at the feet of everyone who hurt you while you burn the world down so they’ll know why its happening, they’ll know they deserve it. Justice is real, and its name is justified vengeance.

“Chara-” your mouth says without your permission, looking down at the useless, unwanted thing in your arms, “it’s time to go.”

You smile. You and him, you and your brother who loves you, you’re going to free everyone, you’re going to free everyone and afterward everything will go back to normal. You can be a family again. Everything will be okay.

Your hand blasts a hole in the ceiling, and you stare at the fireball explosion in awe. That’s nothing like Asriel’s lighter tricks before. The two of you are amazing! Nothing can stop you!

You blast through the opening like gravity is a suggestion, with Dad screaming behind you, and skid across the lake surrounding the castle toward the magma fields.

“I can’t believe you’re alive!” Asriel yells, hot crybaby tears on your cheeks, “I’m so glad!”

“It’s amazing!” You gasp, “we’re amazing!”

“We can do absolutely anything!” Asriel screams over the roar of wind in your ears. You’ve never moved this fast in your life, not even in a car.

"We can save everyone!" You shriek, your voice odd in your mouth, pitched all wrong like you don't know how to use your own vocal chords. Maybe you don't! They're brand new to you- exciting, monster, better, brighter, brilliant, and you can't believe it. Did you deserve this? Was this what all the suffering in your life was for? Some kind of toll to deserve passing into this new life, a monster body full of power, full of the power to take vengeance and bring righteous fury and right all the wrongs before you. Is this your heaven? It could be.

You pass the gas station shop you stole the chocolate bars from, first. It took you days to get this far, before! You can't stop laughing. You ran out of that building in tears, and you bitterly remember the threats the cashier sent you running with. She called the cops on you. You were hungry. You deserved those chocolate bars.

"Asriel," you say, "How do you make the fire?"

"Fire?" Asriel says, and your face scrunches up as he thinks, "You pull it out of your soul. You sort of... think hot thoughts, and push them through all the little vessels in your arms."

"You pull it out of your soul..." You whisper, and hold your paws out in front of you. Your perfect, clawed little hands, and close your eyes, feeling all your anger burn up in your heart, and you follow it through your blood and to the tips of your fingers, and when you clench and unclench your fists, your paws are filled with flames. You cackle hysterically, delighted at how easy it was to turn your furry into fire.

"Wow!" says Asriel, "You made so much!"

"I'm about to make more," you laugh, and point your hand at the store, before you churn out so much anger-fire that a tornado of it engulfs the building for a moment, making your arm shake violently with the effort. You snap your arm away and the flames go out, and you bend over double, panting. When you look up, the gas station has burst into flames, the plastic sign falling to the sidewalk and you hear screaming inside as people flood into the parking lot.

"Chara-" Asriel says, and you hear shock in his tone. You're shocked, too!

"Amazing!" You cry, "Amazing! Asriel, we're amazing!"

"Chara..." He says. Speechless!

You spit on the ground, "Fuck you!" You scream at the people fleeing. You don't see the cashier, which is disappointing, "Fuck all of you!"

You can't stop here, though. You need to go home. You adjust your old vessel on your shoulder and shoot forward again, like a plane or a bird through the trees, like a fallen angel out for vengeance. When you pass the house with the clothesline and the dogpen, the dog is in it. You know what it's like to be caged, so you rip the cage out of the ground with one hand and crumple it like paper. The dog goes running, tail between its legs. Stupid to be scared of you, you just set it free.

You sneer at the house, with all the clothes neatly hung on the line. They have a kid your age, you know, from the clothes you took. You bet they get to wear whatever they want. You bet they don't get locked in the basement when they speak out of turn. You bet they don't get beat and hit and hurt. It's not fucking fair that people like that get to exist while you do- it's not fair that other people get to be happy while you suffered just a few miles away.

While you were screaming and crying in your basement, begging for God to let you go, they were probably playing Scrabble or some shit with mommy and daddy. You hate them. You hate them. You hate them.

You burn that house down, too, your hands turning your hatred into something tangible, and it feels so fucking natural, like you could always do it.

"Chara! What are you doing?!"

"Relax," you whisper, reverently watching the building burn, "I'm only stopping for a second. We're almost there."

"Almost where!?"

"Almost home," you sigh, before you shoot off again.

You pass your garden, first. Your vegetables have died. The tomato plants have crumpled beneath their own weight, untended, the carrots overgrown. You can hardly tell them apart from the weeds. And, God, the weeds. The golden flowers have taken over the box and the yard, bloomed out and claimed the ground for their own. Funny to think you were the only thing standing between them and the total ownership of the lawn. You laugh at the sight, and dump your body into the thick of them. A perfect place to leave it- to be taken by the weeds only you could stop. Fitting.

"This is them," you hiss.

"Who?"

" _Them_ ," you snarl, all your hatred in the word. Your lips curl upward like a dogs, your snout crumpling and your teeth bared. You don't even need to raise a hand- the church burns like dry leaves. You can't stop laughing. You can't stop laughing. God, it's so beautiful- red orange against the sunset sky, the Hell you once called home.

You go silent, frozen like ice when you see a door open. Mrs. Gracie stumbles out, coughing, tripping over her own feet as she tries to escape the smoke. You can't even breathe.

"Do you know that lady?" Asriel asks. He sounds frightened. That's fine. You'll be brave enough for both of you.

"She raised me," you breathe.

"She's your mother?!" Asriel cries, taking a step back. You frown and shake your head violently.

"She is not my mother," you tell him, "My mother was a no-good crackwhore prostitute who got killed and went to Hell."

"What are you talking about!?" Asriel cries. Mrs. Gracie sees you, then looks down, and sees your body. She covers her mouth. You snarl at her. You're done talking. You raise a hand and let your hatred fill you.

"Chara, stop!" Asriel screams, yanking your arm down and to the side. Your whole body goes with it, jerked to the side. An inferno shoots out of your paw and into the forest, setting the trees ablaze.

"Why did you do that?!" You snap at him.

"This isn't right!" He cries, "You can't just kill her! She raised you!"

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about!" You scream at him, and you can feel him recoil inside you, "She deserves to die!"

"No one deserves to die, Chara!"

"Of course they do!" You yell, "All humans deserve to die! They're evil, evil, evil!"

"You're human, Chara!"

"NOT ANYMORE!" You scream, and whip back around to Mrs. Gracie. You only barely see her run back inside the burning church. "Get back here, you coward!" You cry, darting across the yard toward the door.

Asriel yanks you backward, anchoring your feet to the ground, the weeds brushing your shins gently. "Chara, stop! This isn't what I expected, I- I don't like this!"

"What the fuck did you expect?!" You snap, "That we would come up here and six humans would cry and say they're so sorry for what they did to us, and just let us take their souls? No, Asriel, humans don't have any shame, don't have any fucking integrity- up here, on the surface, it's different than it is on the Underground. If you want something, if you need something, you have to take it. People will crush your face into the dirt for fun. Trust me, she's earned this."

"I don't like this!" Asriel sobs, "I don't like it, Chara! This is... this is fucked up!"

"Hey, now you sound like you're serious," you laugh, "If you don't like it, just don't watch! I'll do all the hard work and you can take the glory. I don't even want it!"

"There's no glory in murdering an old woman, Chara! This isn't... this isn't right, we have to stop! We have to go home!"

"We will," you say, yanking one foot up and planting it a step farther as you try to force your body forward, "As soon as I kill six humans, and can free monsterkind forever."

"No," Asriel says, and he isn't crying anymore, "I'm not letting you do that. I didn't- I feel like I don't know you at all. I won't let you kill anyone, Chara. We're leaving! We're going home and we're telling Mom and Dad everything!"

"No!!" You shriek, hysterically, "Fuck you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate-"

"Shut up, Chara!" Asriel screams, "Stop saying that!" He tries to clamp your mouth shut with your hands and you scrunch your eyes shut, trying to rip your paws away from your face.

Pain erupts through you like you've never known before. Every rope burn on your wrists, every cut on your arms, every bruise, every burn, every single one at the same time couldn't possibly measure to this. Your gut feels like the end of the world, like you've been wrended open and outward and undone. Your hands shake and your gasp for air, staring down at your stomach through bleary eyes.

White dust like dry sand pours out of a hole in your midsection, followed quickly by a stream of cherry red blood that mixes with the dust and turns it into a pink-red sludge that you can't keep looking at. You jerk your head up to see Mrs. Gracie standing by the door with soot on her face and a shotgun in her arms. You try to wheeze a cuss at her, but only air comes out.

You stumble, catching yourself as you try to keep your balance. You feet move backward, and you can't even find the focus to stop them.

Your hands pick up your body. Your feet walk away. The sun sets over the mountain, and in the darkness, beneath the cold stars, your body moves without you, leaving a gruesome trail of dust and blood that seems unending, like you should have been empty a thousand times over by now, but it just keeps coming.

"We're going to die," you cough, "If we can get one human soul, maybe we'll be stronger. Maybe we'll live."

"No," Asriel says, resolute, silent tears on your face.

"If we die now then I died before for nothing. It means my life didn't matter."

"I won't," he says. Stubborn. Foolish. Stupid.

"You weren't supposed to die, too, you idiot," you sputter, the taste of pennies between your teeth, "We have to go back. We have to finish this. You have to live."

"We're going home."

"Asriel-"

"No."

"Please..." You beg, weakly. You can't imagine how he can keep walking. You'd give anything to give up now, to curl up in the crook of a gnarled old oak and just die.

"We're going home!" he says. He sounds desperate.

When you pass through the barrier, your body is melting like a sand sculpture in the rain. Pink-red wet sand is dripping from your white fur like porridge, your body falling apart even as it tries to hold your weight. You lose a little more with each step, and your voice cries out, blubbering, for Mommy and Daddy. You don't even know if it's you or Asriel screaming. You can't tell the difference anymore.

He finally drops your disgusting old corpse in front of your parents. It looks like they're screaming or speaking, but you can't hear them. All you can hear is blood in your ears. You try to keep walking toward them, pushing each leg forward like playdough, sobbing sand-tears and reaching for... something, anything.

And, finally.

Darkness takes you.


End file.
